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Psychological Roots Of Islamic Rage
Jewish Press ^ | 09 August 2006 | Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., Nancy H. Kobrin, Ph.D.

Posted on 08/12/2006 1:20:47 AM PDT by Lorianne

Islamic terrorists routinely kidnap the most vulnerable civilians and hold them hostage. Hamas and Hizbullah, like Arafat’s PLO, hold their own people hostage as well, and hide both themselves and their weapons among Muslim civilians.

For years, Hizbullah held the village of Kana hostage. When Israel finally fought back against Hizbullah’s shelling of Israeli civilians, the Jewish state reaped a whirlwind of condemnation. Israel mourned these civilian deaths even as many Islamists celebrated these deaths as a great propaganda victory.

Just as Hizbullah hid behind women and children in Kana, using them as human shields, so too does Muslim culture “honor-murder” its own women and girls.

Since we are now one world connected by cell phones, the Internet, and satellite television programs – as well as by Muslim immigration to the West, similar behavior can and has erupted against American civilians, both at home and abroad. In the recent past, Muslim Islamists have shot and killed Jewish-American males – e.g. Leon Klinghoffer (1985), Rabbi Meir Kahane (1990), Ari Halberstam (1994), Daniel Pearl (2002) and Nicholas Berg (2004).

In 1968, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, murdered Senator Robert Kennedy because Kennedy’s pro-Israel stand enraged him.

We may now have reached a turning point of sorts. On July 28, 30-year-old Naveed Afsal Haq, a supposedly lone and mentally ill Muslim-American of Pakistani origin (he had been diagnosed as bipolar and was on lithium and depacote), took a 13 year-old American girl hostage in order to gain entry to the Jewish Federation Building in Seattle.

(We must note that many mentally ill people are functioning, non-violent members of society and that many criminals, including dictators, have never been psychiatrically diagnosed or denigrated.)

Haq declared that he was “angry with Israel” and announced that it was a “hostage” situation. He began shooting women, including one who was pregnant. Five Jewish- and Christian-American women were wounded and one, 58-year-old Pam Waechter, was murdered. Haq shot several of the women in the abdomen.

Perhaps Haq’s crime is not only the product of his bipolar mental illness. It may also reflect an Islamic culture that denigrates women in general and a jihadist culture that denigrates all life, including Muslim life, and which seeks to oppress and destroy all living beings. For example, many Islamic suicide killers will purposely target pregnant women or women with small children before they blow themselves up.

Further, both in the past and in general, Jews have been seen as “female” or “feminine” because they were not allowed to bear arms and preferred a non-violent resolution of conflict for both ethical and practical reasons.

Islamic culture is a shame-and-honor-culture. What this means is that child socialization involves shaming and humiliation. Many adults reared this way are especially sensitive to slights that tend to be experienced as extremely humiliating.

Haq has been described as short (he is 5 ‘4 and wore elevator soles). He has also been described as bald, socially inept, a loner, and, despite a degree in engineering, unemployed. The ideologies of extreme hatred often attract highly dysfunctional followers, some of whom are capable of violence.

Haq’s crime took place on a Friday – a day when devout Muslims often hear sermons excoriating Israel, Jews, and America. In Israel, many Jews have been stabbed by Muslims on a Friday. In our opinion, however, this may not have been the case here. Haq had been charged with “lewd conduct” for having exposed himself in a public place. His humiliation was about to escalate. He snapped – but in a particular kind of way.

Like the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, who wanted no pregnant women to approach his imagined corpse, Haq apparently had no interest (or ability) to relate to women. People refuse to understand that the “occupation” that jihadists rant about is really how they themselves have been “occupied” by childhood shaming and punishing techniques. When such cruelty turns them crazy or when they are psychologically vulnerable, they may act out in the only socially approved ways allowed, namely, they first scapegoat the intimate enemy which is female and then the outsider enemy: Jews, Israelis, Zionists, and Americans.

Haq’s act is chillingly reminiscent of the Montreal Massacre that took place on December 6, 1989. Marc Lepine entered the engineering school at the University of Montreal and killed fourteen women while wounding fifteen others. Lepine, who had been rejected by both the Canadian Army and the engineering school at the University of Montreal, said in his suicide note that he was after the “feminist viragos” who had ruined his life.

The Canadian police saw this as an isolated act of a madman (as American police had once viewed Ted Bundy’s bloody trail of femicide). What the Canadian police failed to understand was the importance of certain biographical and childhood factors. For example, Lepine was born Gamile Rodrigue Gharbi to an Algerian Muslim father and a French-Canadian mother who had formerly been a nun. Lepine’s father, Liess Gharbi, physically and psychologically brutalized both his son and his wife. He probably taught his son that women are chattel – property – who deserve to be beaten even when they are obedient and perhaps murdered when they are not.

What is important to note is that Gharbi/Lepine blamed women for the considerable crimes of his father, whose culture was Islamic and Algerian.

As Dr. Chesler recounts in her book, The Death of Feminism, in 2001 an angry mob of 300 Algerian men conducted a three-day pogrom against Algerian women in which they tortured, stabbed, mutilated, gang-raped, buried alive and murdered women in Hassi Messaoud.

In Dr. Chesler’s 1978 book, “About Men,” she posited that the paternal abandonment of, and cruelty toward, sons may be a crucial component in mother- and woman-hating. Dr. Nancy Kobrin, in her forthcoming book The Sheik’s New Clothes: The Naked Truth About Islamic Suicide Terrorism, suggests that the absolute degradation of Arab and Muslim women by a shame- and honor-society means that sons must perpetually rid themselves of the “contamination” that contact with women represents; and that sons must psychologically abandon their mothers even as they experience abandonment by their mothers. Many such sons are trained to mistrust, police, routinely batter, and sometimes even murder their female relatives.

Dr. Kobrin believes that such psychological dynamics may play a crucial role in contemporary Islamic terrorism.

While girl- and woman-battering and honor murders are increasingly normalized in Islamic culture, the enemy-outsider, who must also be scapegoated, has been increasingly eroticized. Israel-hatred and Jew-hatred have achieved a level of political-erotic obsession among jihadists that may even surpass that of the Nazi era. Israel is no longer “feminine” and for some, this is its great, existential crime. Israel refuses to absorb the hatred and violence or to forever turn the other cheek.

Individual Jewish women, though, may present a particularly tempting target to mentally ill and violent Muslims in a jihadic era. The “Jewess” is the most denigrated female in Islamic ideology. Zaynab bint Al-Harith, the Khaybar “Jewess,” is the woman who was falsely accused of having poisoned the prophet Muhammed after having witnessed the beheading of her entire male community in the Battle of Khaybar. Not coincidentally, Hizbullah currently calls its missiles “Khaybar.” We have also been told that a new Iranian television station is known as “Khaybar.”

Israeli civilians are at the greatest risk as they endure a slow Holocaust-like bleed of civilians. American civilians, both here and abroad, including in Europe, are also at great risk. All those who currently work for Jewish organizations in America are perhaps especially vulnerable to this eroticized Jew-hatred that permeates the very air we breathe.

We hope that Americans, both male and female, especially those who believe their politically correct and pro-jihadic views will protect them from jihadic violence, will now begin to wrestle with the tragedy in Seattle. We hope they do not blame Israel for what Haq did. His crime is a complicated mix of mental illness, woman-hatred, and Jew- and Israel-hatred. Perhaps all the propaganda against Israel and the Jews propelled Haq, a lost soul, to cling to the illusion that his criminal action could redeem his lost honor.

A Jewish woman who knew the murdered Pam Waechter told us that Waechter, who was born a Lutheran and converted to Judaism, “was a better Jew than I or most of us could ever be.” Jewish tradition believes that messianic redemption will enter the world through the good deeds of women converts to Judaism, beginning with Ruth, the ancestor of King David. Let us learn the necessary lessons about redemption from Pam Waechter’s martyrdom.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: crushislam; haq; islam; islamicnazis; islamisadeathcult; islamisevil; phyllischesler; psychology; seattleshooting; trop; wot
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To: dubaijazz

I look forward to your reply.


61 posted on 08/13/2006 4:54:18 AM PDT by Lucky Dog
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To: dubaijazz
"Now, wouldn’t the American conservatives like to hear the other side of the story?
My English is good enough to convey the message, please don’t try to make me feel inferior, I had a view of point which I wanted to cast, that's it."


How come when you have an "other side of the story" it is "a view of point", but when I "cast" my point of view you call it "lies"?
62 posted on 08/13/2006 5:25:32 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper (ETERNAL SHAME on the Treasonous and Immoral Democrats!)
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To: Lucky Dog
It was really interesting to watch the debate between Heidi Harris and Amy Goodman the other day on MSNBC’s hardball, re the subject (is Islam an evil/destructive doctrine?)
Heidi’s approach was the average stereotypical superficial and insulting to all Muslims and I quote her here saying:
“Killing in Islam has started soon after the death of Muhammad””I don’t deny that there are few good Muslims, but the majority of evildoers on earth comes from among Muslims”
“I agree with president bush that Islam is a fascist religion, and I am glad that he eventually said it”
But I was pleased and proud with the firm and moderate reply of Amy:
“To smear a whole nation or religion like this is racist and disgusting”
“Even though Timothy Mc Veigh was Christian, Heidi wouldn’t label him as a fascist Christian, he would be normally called a ‘criminal’”
I found these excerpts from the US media as an apt introduction to start this post with, which is not meant to defend the evildoers among Muslims (and I acknowledge here that there are such bad apples amongst them), however, it would be useful to understand the context from which such violent people emerge.
I am not going to be confined to the ‘Creativity Constraints’ aspect of this dialogue, because the subject has so many implications at the back of the minds of the people involved in it, and whether we like it or not, the correlation between Islam and Terror would always float to the surface.
Terror by its abstract meaning is violence, violence itself is a method which is devised by some parties to settle disputes, and as long as these disputes are unsettled, violence will still be an inevitable option.
The US administration realized after 9/11 that the “deterrence theory” is not working anymore, Bush tried to change his policies toward spreading democracy in the middle east, and toward changing the deplorable situation that many of the people in the ME are experiencing, the situation that is driving many of them to radicalize.
There has become a need to search for the root causes of the problems, the simple approach of controlling countries by subordinating its rulers is no longer a viable option.
What do people in this part of the world want?
What are their aspirations?
The answer is simple, their needs don’t differ from those of other human beings: decent living, freedom, human rights, and democracy.
These are all achievable objectives, and they are also the basic requisites to enrich the soil that nurtures creativity and human development.
It’s not impossible for the US to have good and healthy relationship with the Arab states, provided that all the unsettled disputes are settled.
The core source of problems in the Middle East is the Arab-Israeli dispute, and unless and until this issue is figured out, there will still be depressions and ‘constraints’.
The previous US administrations have done a good job of sponsoring peace talks between Arab states and Israel; this effort needs to be revived immediately.

Quick notes:
- It is very knowledgeable and thoughtful gesture of you to mention how the humanity owes the Islamic civilization so many achievements, whether they are in algebra, math, philosophy, biology, or geography, and I must thank you for being fair and impartial with regards to history.
- Democratic elections in the Middle East don’t only take place in Iraq, Israel, and Turkey. They do take place in Palestine and Lebanon as well.
- The wealthiest person in India is an IT entrepreneur, and he’s a Muslim.
- The majority of populations in the developed state of Malaysia are Muslims.

Looking forward to hear from you soon, and it’s always a pleasure to have this calm and civilized discussion.
63 posted on 08/14/2006 10:40:01 AM PDT by dubaijazz (Why?)
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To: 1st-P-In-The-Pod; A_Conservative_in_Cambridge; af_vet_rr; agrace; albyjimc2; Alexander Rubin; ...
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.

Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.

64 posted on 08/14/2006 10:53:03 AM PDT by Alouette (Psalms of the Day: 97-103)
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To: dubaijazz

Have you ever met a Jew? What is your opinion of Jews?


65 posted on 08/14/2006 11:21:54 AM PDT by Alouette (Psalms of the Day: 97-103)
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To: Lorianne
haSatan
66 posted on 08/14/2006 11:26:18 AM PDT by Uri’el-2012 (Ps. 144:1 Praise be to YHvH, my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.)
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To: Alouette

Yes dear, I haven't only met a Jew, one of my best friends is Jew, and he's Swedish also.
He's a wonderful guy, absolutely no frictions.


67 posted on 08/14/2006 11:41:14 AM PDT by dubaijazz (Why?)
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To: dubaijazz

I am not "dear" to you.


68 posted on 08/14/2006 11:42:50 AM PDT by Alouette (Psalms of the Day: 97-103)
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To: muir_redwoods

I had forgotten how many great Muslim scientists, artists, politicians, philosophers, etc. that there were. These countries are run in the typical feudal style, with the top 5-10% having the majority of the wealth and the other 90-95% being kept in near poverty, other than the emirates. The masses are mostly uneducated and kept that way for a reason. Lebanon was once one of the most profitable democracies in the Middle East but with the influx of the Syrians and other jihadis can't even defend itself. Real creative.


69 posted on 08/14/2006 11:49:16 AM PDT by unionblue83 (Duty is ours; consequences are God's. -- Stonewall Jackson.)
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To: backinthefold

IIRC, it was in the instructions he left behind on what to do with his body.


70 posted on 08/14/2006 11:58:51 AM PDT by kallisti
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To: Lorianne

bump


71 posted on 08/14/2006 1:34:16 PM PDT by webstersII
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To: dirtbiker

I'm 5'9"...

... and I ridicule you!

Haha!

You 6'2" knigget.


72 posted on 08/14/2006 2:53:03 PM PDT by gogogodzilla (I criticize everyone... and then breath some radioactive fire and stomp on things.)
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To: gogogodzilla

LOL!


73 posted on 08/14/2006 3:46:17 PM PDT by dirtbiker (I've tried to see the liberal point of view, but I couldn't get my head that far up my a$$....)
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To: fanfan; Lorianne; GMMAC; Pikamax; Former Proud Canadian; Great Dane; Alberta's Child; ...
When assessing the actions of Muslims, particularly Arabs, one should consider the genetic factors that have been at work for millenia. Most Muslim populations, archetypically that of Saudi Arabia, are inbred to the point that what any sane westerner would call " insanity" is absolutely endemic. These people rarely marry outside their own clan, and almost never outside of their own tribe.

Typical example is Osama bin Ladin, one of 75 children born to his father, a Yemeni, who typically was married to four of his cousins, many of them sisters (!), at a time, and whose parents were also cousins. He is gangly and abnormally tall, deaf, with poor eyesight and very bad kidneys. He has tics, and is nuttier than Aunt Laura's fruitcake. He could walk down a street in Riyadh completely unnoticed.

Osama is also married to various cousins and also has about 75 children. He is no exception in Saudi Arabia, where every other store front is an optometrist shop, a hearing aid store, or a dialysis facility. The gene pool is very dense. This is recognized by the Saudi government, which encourages the importation of brides from elsewhere in the Muslim world, particularly, Egypt,(where they may be just as inbred) Lebanon, and Turkey. Or if one is a really rich Saudi, one buys one's son a Bosnian, or Albanian bride.

Birth defects, both physical and mental are far more common than amongst western populations. Bottom line, we're playing cards with folks who ain't got a full deck, and too many jokers.

74 posted on 08/14/2006 7:45:38 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (How the hell did 12 apostles get into 1 Accord?)
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To: Alouette; 1st-P-In-The-Pod; A_Conservative_in_Cambridge; af_vet_rr; agrace; albyjimc2; ...

Know-thy-enemy-ping


75 posted on 08/14/2006 7:47:50 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (How the hell did 12 apostles get into 1 Accord?)
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To: Lorianne

gherkins..


76 posted on 08/14/2006 9:17:52 PM PDT by sheik yerbouty ( Make America and the world a jihad free zone!)
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To: anglian

That interview was a great read!


77 posted on 08/14/2006 9:32:50 PM PDT by Focault's Pendulum
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To: Kenny Bunk
That would go a long way to explain the behavior, and their belief in Islam.
78 posted on 08/15/2006 4:32:53 AM PDT by fanfan
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To: fanfan
That would go a long way to explain the behavior, and their belief in Islam.

Unfortunately, fanfan, when one downloads this information, it often makes HIM look kinda crazy.

However, I am a betting man and will wager a goodly sum that the parents of the Muslim criminal described in the post were at the very least, 2d cousins!

The magnitude of the problem in Saudi Arabia is huge. Since the l960's, the population has increased from 5 or 6 million, to close to 30 million. Oil money-fueled social programs have enabled the men of the lower classes to emulate the upper and have many clan-cousin-sister wives at a time, and change them frequently... so that they will father 35 or 50 highly inbred children by the time they reach 50. Infant mortality, while still high compared to the West, has also been greatly reduced.

This ties in directly to terrorism, because there are now an unprecedented horde of nutty young men in Muslim countries who haven't a damn thing to do except hang around the mosques and madrassas listening to fire-breathing, equally nutty, state-supported, imams.

79 posted on 08/15/2006 5:08:48 AM PDT by Kenny Bunk (How the hell did 12 apostles get into 1 Accord?)
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To: Kenny Bunk

Fascinating comments. I had no idea that their society was like that.

The lower castes in India have this same sort of situation. With some of those people, the lights are on but there is definitely no one home.

The nobility of Europe and also of ancient Rome were filled with wackos and nutjobs because of inbreeding. That's bad enough, but when you get a whole country full of it then that's a disaster.


80 posted on 08/16/2006 5:53:27 AM PDT by webstersII
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