…Many Brits, for some foolish reason, pin the blame on British foreign policy. Oh, if only our foreign policy did not mimic the American foreign policy, we would stop producing home grown terrorists, because they would have no reason to hate us. Wrong. Dead wrong.
Imagine for one moment that I cast a magical spell, let’s say, using my Harry Potter wand, and the British government’s foreign policy became precisely what 99.9% of Muslims wanted it to be (assuming Muslims could agree — which, I can assure you, they can’t). But let’s say that happened. Would British-born Muslim fanaticism disappear? I assure you most certainly not. For you see, Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq are just proxies for the fanatic. If all of those places were at peace he would find new reasons for legitimizing his killing. He would target Western “materialism.” He would target Western “hedonism.” He would target Western “secularism.” Just as a fanatic can look to the television and see dead Muslim children around the world to fuel his rancor, he would be able to find on the television any number of other “catalysts” to fuel his behavior.
Yet, what is going on in Britain that it is producing so many? If we can identify that, perhaps we can resolve how to fix it. Is it Islam (as the knee-jerk Islamophobe will allege). If it were, the United States would be producing as many, and that’s patently not the case. Those in the States who are Muslim and have carried out acts of fanaticism have been imports. Not part of our communities. In fact, our communities have been actively involved in fighting such fanatics (this police officer was Muslim). Besides, Britain itself houses hundreds of thousands of Muslims who have no support for the fanatics.
The roots of British-based Muslim fanaticism go back a while. Central figures involve Omar Bakri Muhammad and Abu Hamza. Bakri was asylum seeker who then propogated an anti-Western (almost treasonous) position against his host country (which means he was a parasite). The two roamed free and unfettered in the insular communities of England. Picking off and chewing up in their cadaverous rhetoric 2nd and 3rd generation Pakistani youth — who I will speak about later. It was the acolytes of these leaders who were banned at the premier Muslim mosque in London, London Central Mosque (they were kept 20 feet out of the premises with a chain separating them from the regular worshippers). It was these acolytes who attended the anti-Denmark cartoon rally carrying inflammatory and inexcusable placards.
Both of these men are no longer in England. Bakri Muhammad was deported. Abu Hamza fled. Does that mean that their ideology is no more? Of course not. It has been handed down to, guess who: yes, a British-Pakistani. His name is Anjum Choudhary (no link for him), who is now head of the Al-Ghurabaa (The Strangers). The British government has banned them. However, that was not until July 17th of 2006! Prior to that, Anjum showed up on BBC, in a roundtable discussion (which he clearly had every intention of destroying with his arrogance). During the course of the debate he essentially told one of the female Muslim activists that she was not in a place to talk because she did not wear the hijab. Anjum represents the same strain of fanatical supremacism that Bakri Muhammad and Abu Hamza had been peddling, and while the organization might be banned, the ideology lives on, percolating in the Muslim communities, which brings us to the Pakistani-Brits that have now become the hand-maidens of fanaticism.
Most Pakistani-Brits are not prone to violence, or even concern themselves with such things.
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Nevertheless, the reality is that it is precisely this group of young men who are giving life to fanaticism, and they have to be spoken about. Muslims cannot hide behind the victimization of being called “Paki” and then fail to address the problems their communities are creating. As I understand the situation, European immigrant communities differ from American in that they are all very insular, as this article on the battle for the heart of Islam explains, according to an Arab-American-Brit.
“In Europe, as a migrant you are welcomed, but it is insular, you stay in your quarters,” he says. “In America, the entire economic system is based on diversity. You have to be open to every culture to sell them your product or else you won’t survive. So, sooner or later, everyone ends up in bed together.”
Further, the European social model is different than the American such that social mobility is difficult, if not impossible. … We Americans have a hard time understanding that parts of the First World are incapable of providing social mobility. Not only that, but Europeans do not seem lilkely to change, as the French protests in support of the right to stay lazy demonstrated.
The additional social force exerting upon the Pakistani’s who are turning radical is that they are second, even third generation, Brits. Most have no difficulties getting an education (the 7/7 bombers had university degrees), getting girls, getting married, getting a life. In other words, the “immigrant struggle” that their parents and grandparents waged doesn’t affect them. All they have to do is be consumers, participate in popular culture, and pass the time. Again, the book to read is Londonistani in which the crass materialism of this generation of children is so superbly manifested: the characters spend most of the time talking about their beamers. So when they turned to the fanatic ideology, they are doing it 1) to acquire meaning, 2) to belong to a group, and 3) to exorcise their existential ennui.
They remind me a bit of the otaku, the *(I'm alone, but not lonely) anime-worshipping post-modernists of Japan who don’t know what they are, only what they aren’t (see last paragraph of piece). .. these British-Pakistani post-modernists have numerous external forces they must answer to: people like Anjum Choudhary, Bin Laden, Israel/Palestine conflict. The reason I draw the parallel is because Japan has unusually high rates of suicide. The willingness with which British-Pakistanis are committing suicide-attacks, entering war-zones where they are most likely to be killed, is that same suicide impulse.
These kids are steeped in a sort of meaningless nihilism with no way of getting out. Nihilism can be defeated with Belief. However, the only form of belief thaty are drawn to, is the murderous kind. The post-modern Nihilism of these youth meets the regressive Nihilism of Islamic Fanaticism. Thus Anjum Choudhary, British-accented and oratorial, becomes the tool for a hook-handed outcast of the Arab world, Abu Hamza. I am not trying to suggest that Anjum Choudhary is the individual responsible for the recent attacks. I’m sure he has been investigated. What I am arguing, however, is that there are too many Muslims like him perverting the social alienation of the youth and using it to advance their own agendas. I do know he is a nihilist. It reminds me a bit of the brain-washing campaigns the Nazis or the Japanese used to engage in before World War II.
What is most fascinating (and disturbing) about the ‘methods’ used to capture the minds of these youth are that they are rooted in Romanticism. Just as neo-Nazi skin heads are made to appear like the Guardians of the Entire White Race (the film to see is American History X), or Hindutva Thugs are made out to appear as the Guardians of The Purity of the Hindu, so the Muslims in the West are told that they are the Guardians of God’s Majesty. To re-affirm and re-iterate to them that they are unique, special, and simply ‘misunderstood’ they are told that they are “strangers” to the world. That it is not them that is the problem; it is that the rest of the world will never understand them. What was the name of Anjum Choudhary’s now banned party? “The Strangers.” What was the nickname Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi adopted for himself? “Al-Gharib” - “The Stranger.” The way Islam is brought into this Romantic Terror is by way of a hadith of the Prophet which makes a reference to how believers can end up feeling like they are strangers to those who do not share their belief. A Muslim with common-sense can interpret this hadith to mean that the Prophet was simply talking about how its hard to connect with people who disagree with you. The fanatics of the faith, on the other hand, link a few words in the hadith to their Romanticist agenda, and take hold of an impressionable mind. Violence follows.
The other thing I want to do is ask about the responsibility of the parents. Pakistanis, just about everywhere in the world, have a tendency to excessively exalt those that teach their kids. This deference makes them very forgiving and almost apathetic towards what their children’s teachers are doing. My own parents, in a time in my life when I was out of their control, forced me into a madrassa because they thought that my teacher would be able to fix me. We found quickly that it was not until my parents addressed my problems (the fact that I had no friends and was being kept two grades behind) did the problem get addressed. Assuredly, just like that, Pakistani parents in England believe that if they send their children to religious training or education at the local mosque their kids will learn all the ethics and morality they need in life. That is simply not the case.
British madrassas are notoriously hideous. Pedophilia and rape are the norm. In fact, even the British government is aware of this and has called for changes. My friend Thabet opines that in five years the case of molestation and rape in British madrassas is going to blow up the way the Catholic molestation of youth did a few years ago. So the question is again, where are they parents? Of course a child who has been molested as a youth, and then been unquestionedly allowed to go wherever he damn well pleases (in a beamer), is going to go off the deep end. The problem here is not what these guys believe (because even if they believed in Pokemon they would be murderers), but that nothing is being done to combat the conditions which create criminals. That is what each and every bomber and potential bomber has been — a criminal. British Muslims have to begin calling them that. Meanwhile, non-Muslim Brits have to recognize that criminality exists in many manifestations (it isn’t just drugs and rape), and they have to realize that before they stereotype and demonize just the Muslims in Britain for housing criminals, they should look at the criminal drug culture amongst the urban whites as well…