Converts to Islam

"Why would young Europeans flock to Islam? Sociologically, I mean -- what is the reason?"

Could it be, at least in part, because modern Christianity, as practiced by George Bush, televangelists, and other Christian extremists is so shallow/offensive/irrelevant/morally bankrupt that these young Europeans turn to what they percieve as Christianity's nemesis?

Why did hundreds of thousands of young Europeans during the first half of the 20th century (many of them highly educated and wealthy) flock to Marxism-Leninism? Or National Socialism? Or Fascism? Or the anarchic cultural movement of 1968?

The great paradox of modern Western Civilization is that it regularly generates within itself an "Adversary Culture" -- including a small but ever-vocal minority that detests everything about the established order and grasps at any ideology that promises to overthrow it.

Militant Islam does not attract spiritual seekers who might otherwise turn Christian. It attracts nihilists who loathe the civilization they inhabit and yearn for its destruction. For some people, the green flag of Islam now fills the role once played by the hammer and sickle.

"For some people, the green flag of Islam now fills the role once played by the hammer and sickle."

How true. We have a nice crop of Joe McCarthys and Roy Cohns sprouting up to compete with the new Muslims. If only modern Christianity could offer these people something of value...

One, materialism cannot satisfy the longings of the soul.

That may be true, but are you really suggesting that most converts are drawn to Islam for its spirituality? Where is the evidence for that?

I agree with Simon's point about an "Adversary Culture". This culture wants the dominant culture destroyed because it believes it cannot realize enough of its material benefits, and better for all to go down than for a few to have an unequal status. Islam offers equal slavery for all (except the caliphs of course).

"Logical bankruptcy? Prove it."

First of all, the notion that this is "a time of war with Islamic extremism" is just bellicose rhetoric. There are undoubtedly lots more like Rod Dreher who fancy themselves at war with all sorts of things real and imagined, but there is no official, binding declaration of war with Islamic extremism, nor will there ever be.

And would it be illegal or unconstitional for Islamic extremists, or Druids, banjo dealers or any other classification of US citizen to exercise their rights to free speech in a non-violent manner?

And there is ample evidence that there are extremists of all stripes in the US. If we're going to investigate one group, we should investigate all of them.

You should consider that your one-note wolf tone for Islam goes a long way in fostering the indifference that irks you so.

Where is the logical bankruptcy, Brad?

Premiss: Anti-terrorism experts worry about Islamic terrorists/extremists preying on the increasing number of converts to Islam and converting them to the cause.

Premiss: There are valid reasons to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist organization, has moved to take over the institutions of Islam in America, in part to educate US Muslims in their own politicized form of Islamic orthodoxy, for the sake of overthrowing the US system and installing sharia.

Premiss: The NYPD just released a highly acclaimed counterterrorism report citing the radicalization of Muslims in this country as a threat that will probably be greater than that of al-Qaeda.

Conclusion: Authorities concerned about stopping Islamic terrorism in this country ought to thoroughly investigate the role that the Muslim Brotherhood and its extremist ideology is playing in American Islam and Islamic institutions.

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Logical bankruptcy? Prove it.

The logical bankruptcy is that there is never any "strong likelihood"--your statement that I specifically cited by quote, which you understandably abandoned defense of in exchange for the alternate conclusion you replaced it with, above--of a general condition necessarily obtaining from a particular.

As I mentioned, it would be equally logically bankrupt to claim the opposite, that particular peaceful or moderate elements would necessarily lead to a "strong likelihood" of a general peaceful or moderate outcome.

BTW, it's "premise". ;-)

The phenomenon you cite in Europe seems to me to speak more to the worldwide phenomenon underway for some decades now of a flight from the anomie and nihilism of post-Christian, post-modern civilization into more defining fundamentalist religions and ideologies across the board. Certainly it describes your own religious pilgrimage as well as it does any German converting to Islam, as well as describing many non-religious journeys as well.

On the other hand, it doesn't describe the opposite experimentation of the previously rigorously defined youth that is occurring simultaneously, say, Chinese, or Muslim youth that, with the opportunity to escape their prior limitations, are sampling and indulging themselves in personal liberties and materialism to the extent they can.

In all cases, I think you really are seeing Rieff's "triumph of the therapeutic" across the spectrum of transitory individual religious and ideological personal choices, fundamentalist and contra-fundamentalist alike.

The dangerousness or peacefulness of any of them is a function of what any individual or group of individuals actually do with them, and we should be alert to danger from whatever quarter it may come.

"wereN'T plenty of Americans..."

Ugh. Caffeine--stat.

"I do not think that political Islam is an existential threat at this moment"

Then you disagree with our platitude dispensing host, Mr. Dreher when he says that this is "a time of war with Islamic extremism."

But even Mr. Dreher agrees that McCarthy went too far, and Mr. Dreher is the one demanding congressional hearings. I wonder if Mr. Dreher will still be as sanguine about these hearings if they were to reveal the complex relationship between political Islam, political Zionism and US corporate imperialism?

John E.

Why sure you can sustain yourself on secular atheism just like a person could sustain themselves on rice gruel fortified with protein powder.

I prefer to sustain myself on a full course feast with dessert afterwards, but hey, if you prefer rice gruel, that's your right ;-)

What I don't understand is why so many liberals are willing to give a free pass to a religion that, if it treated Blacks the way it treats its women, and if it prevented free speech the way it prevents Christian religious activity (but, surprise! surprise! it DOES prohibit free speech; just as any cartoonist or movie maker), would have them up in arms.

"What I don't understand is why so many liberals are willing to give a free pass to a religion that, if it treated Blacks the way it treats its women, and if it prevented free speech the way it prevents Christian religious activity (but, surprise! surprise! it DOES prohibit free speech; just as any cartoonist or movie maker), would have them up in arms."

Who is giving it a free pass? Just because we don't believe that people should automatically be deported, denied immigration, or hauled in front of Congress we are giving it a "free pass?"

Secondly, while some radical interpretations of Islam treat women abominably, there is no general standard. In many ways, the treatment of Muslim women in Europe and the U.S. is not that far removed from the treatment of women by other orthodox and conservative religious groups. All deny women the ability to be clerics, many have modesty standards, many have similar views of men being the primary authority.

"You ignored my condition -- that IF it's true that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to gain control of Muslim institutions in the US, for purposes of making sure that its version of Islam is the normative one, THEN there is a "strong likelihood" that converts will be instructed in the Ikhwan's militant version of Islam. Where is the illogic there?"

Let me go back to your original statement, because it makes your case stronger than either of your subsequent variations from it:

"If, as some outspoken anti-Islamist Muslims have charged, Islamists are taking over the institutions of Islamic life i America and turning it to the Muslim Brotherhood's goals, then it seems to me that there is a strong likelihood that converts to Islam will be educated in a militant, political, extremist Islam."

You're right; I concede, I ignored the pivotal conditional: your conclusion does derive tautologically and inescapably from its premise: if "there is a strong likelihood that converts to Islam will be educated in a militant, political, extremist Islam" (or why else would the MB be of concern?), then "there is a strong likelihood that converts to Islam will be educated in a militant, political, extremist Islam."

Anyway, since you've established yourself in the blogosphere as one of the go-to journalistic voices on the threat from the MB, to the extent as well that Myers, at least, promulgates the notion that you covered the HLF trial, I still would like to know what further details on the Bryant complaint you can provide us given your established expertise in this area.

You're a journalist; you work for the only daily paper in the metropolitan area in which the MB is actually being implicated in a legal trial involving Islamic institutions; you're so attuned to the MB threat you're comfortable sounding your own alarm about the threat unequivocally to others. Surely you actually attended this pivotal trial to further educate yourself at the factual level.

There's no gotcha involved, the DMN account by Jason Trahan simply was minimal at best. I'm not looking for a predetermined answer, just any further info on that aspect by the peer acknowledged expert in the actual MB threat in the U.S. you would appear to be.

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What I don't understand is why so many liberals are willing to give a free pass to a religion that, if it treated Blacks the way it treats its women, and if it prevented free speech the way it prevents Christian religious activity (but, surprise! surprise! it DOES prohibit free speech; just as any cartoonist or movie maker), would have them up in arms.

Posted by: islamofascism | September 20, 2007 3:13 PM
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In the United States, our laws prevent "Islam" from treating women badly, supressing free speech, supressing Christianity, and supressing free speech.

What goes on in other coutries is not my immediate concern. If Muslims in the US obey the law, I have no reason to poke my nose into their beliefs.

"Will, those practical calls for congressional hearings and RICO pursuits were hastily abandoned in the rapidly receding "What To Do About The Muslim Brotherhood?" thread, no doubt because of the actual, practical legal problems involved, in favor of the more perpetuable abstract rhetoric here."

Yes, I think my enthusiam for Rod's hearings is similar to my enthusiasm for the draft.Generally speaking, I'm opposed to both ideas, but implementing these ideas would, I believe, actually acheive two positive goals, and that is a hastier withdrawal from Iraq and a better understanding of the "war" between the US and Islam.

Public hearings on Islam and bringing back the draft would focus public attention on two very sensitive topics, that, like you say, are stuck in perpetual absract rhetoric. We're amusing ourselves to death.

"and too many Americans happy to be their foot soldiers and water carriers."

Actually, history doesn't prove that at all. The McCarthy commie hunts and rest of the red-scare era produced very few people who were actual threats, and arguably the terror of the red-scare mongers was more pervasive a threat than actual Communists.

"Again, the main problem with the McCarthyism trope is that, regardless of the criminality of Tailgunner Joe, America did have Communist enemies who sought to harm the nation...Congressional hearings do not equal McCarthyism."

OK, let's not quibble over terminolgy. Bring on the hearings. Let the truth be known.

Simon wrote: "And then along came a radical strain of Islam that did NOT say, "forgive those who cause you to suffer," or "fight the evil within yourself" or "love your neighbor despite and even because of his faults."

Which is preferable, a religion which does not say "love your neighbor..." or a religion which does say "love your neigbor" and yet its powerful, influential practitioners willfully ignore those teachings when it suits their political goals?

Apparently Rod was given multiple opportunities to question these UCC face-to-face and yet said nothing.

Are you talking about this meeting?
http://dallasmorningviews.beloblog.com/archives/2006/12/muslim_meeting.html

Rod asked quite a few questions during the meeting.

Based on your mistaken contacts for this meeting, I don't have much faith in your contacts at the trial. Anyways, do you have to be physically at the trial to know what is happening? Plus, this is the age of the internet where you can collect a lot of information without ever being physically there.

This looks more like you can't discredit the message, therefore you have to discredit the messenger.

Which is preferable, a religion which does not say "love your neighbor..." or a religion which does say "love your neigbor" and yet its powerful, influential practitioners willfully ignore those teachings when it suits their political goals?

The latter, of course. Because that one, at least, entails a conscience that can reprove those who go astray, rather than doctrines that affirm evil-doing and cheer it on.

By the way, I was referring to a particular strain of Islam, the Salafists. Just wanted to note that before the Tolerance Police show up.

"By the way, I was referring to a particular strain of Islam, the Salafists"

And for the record, I was referring to a particular strain of Christianity, the CINO, or Christian in Name Only.

If I can just add, that's why I've become a counter-revolutionary in my old age.

I guess I should qualify what I was saying, Will. Revolutionary idealism in pursuit of a utopian goal has a way of curdling into something much worse than the disease it was attempting to cure. Especially when it proposes a total cure for the ills of liberal society.

I would say that the Founding Fathers of the U.S. were much more pragmatic. "Let us all hang together so that we do not hang separately."

Mr Dreher, you pinned it in your first comments. When the faith you are raised in is merely nominal, you have no firm attachment to it. Along comes a living breathing faith. One might say, ANY living breathing faith. Your spiritual thirst makes itself known, and you may well follow it to conversion. For Islam is a living breathing faith. Like its precedents Judaism and Christianity, it is concerned with justice and with achieving spiritual growth. There is beauty in its daily practices, in its intellectual traditions, the sung/chanted prayers, the scripture, the religious calendar year. There is community among its adherants. Indeed if you know any actual Muslims, it is its adherants which make it most attractive, above and beyond the religious practice itself.

I first came into contact with Islam at language school in the Army as a 21-year-old. I was deeply affected by the faith as it is lived by ordinary men and women, and by what I saw of its practice among them. I was born with a longing for God. If I had not been raised and educated by such strong Christians who observed a living faith, this might have been my first contact with one. And I might have "converted," if you can call it that when the convert comes from only a nominal faith identity. A few of my fellow trainees did, and they are probably the strongest linguists and cultural liasions we have. I am not surprised that the faith is catching like wildfire in some areas of Europe.

One could only wish ours held a similar attraction for the youth of the continent.