One does not celebrate a victory by planting one’s flag on the soil of the enemy unless he is occupying that land or intends to occupy it. If the Mosque is to be built in New York next to Ground Zero, then we might as well move Iwo Jima Memorial to Japan.
Some 25 years ago, I met at the infamous Le Fouqet in Paris with a Saudi national businessman who was very close to the al-Saud. It was a business meeting but because of few drinks the Saudi had, the conversation quickly turned to politics. Knowing I held a US passport as well as a Saudi one, he had a message for the US: Saudi Arabia will become the most powerful country and we will conquer all lands.
It was almost comedic hearing a Saudi, half inebriated, claim world dominance. The connect between his words and reality were so far apart, I did not give it too much thought at the time, nor did I fully understand what his words meant. These were the words of a drunkard fool after all.
Saudi Arabia controls Makah and Medina, the two Holiest Places in Islam. This means that 1.5 billion Muslims turn their heads and kneel for Saudi Arabia five times a day as a reminder of their piety but more importantly their submission. What the Saudi businessman was telling me twenty five years ago was “It’s not the oil stupid, it’s religion”. If we let Saudi Arabia fund and build the Mosque in New York as a token of their triumphalism over the US for 9/11, we are in fact not applying the Freedom of Religion laws but rather, we are giving my religion the chance to conquer New York by planting its flag of victory.
Mayor Bloomberg is focused on one set of laws when he should be investigating every religious edict or Fatwa of Islam that emanated from our scholars the last 25 years. But what if religion acts like a conquering army? How could we reconcile this fact with our laws? Being an American, laws will always prevail, but being a Muslim also, I have a warning: We will conquer you if you do not change your laws accordingly.
The US better reconcile between Freedom of Religion and Islam as a conquering army soon. The two cannot co-exist for long.
By Farid Ghadry
Reform Party of Syria
Monday, August 9, 2010
Islam’s War on Women’s Pleasure
With “honor” killings [1] on the rise worldwide and in the West especially, Frontpage Symposium has decided to explore the impulse that clearly lies behind this crime against women: the fear and hatred of women’s sexuality. In this special Symposium edition, we have assembled a distinguished panel to approach this phenomenon from a specific angle that is almost always ignored in our media and culture at large. We ask: what are the toxic consequences to a culture in which males allow sexual satisfaction only to themselves? To discuss this issue with us today, our guests are:
Dr. Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who worked for several years with young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen prison. He is the author of Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist’s Experience from the Copenhagen Municipality. The book will be out in English later this year. He can be contact at: nicolaisennels@gmail.com. [2]
Dr. Joanie Lachkar, a licensed Marriage and Family therapist in private practice in Brentwood and Tarzana, California, who teaches psychoanalysis and is the author of The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Marital Treatment (1992, The Many Faces of Abuse: Treating the Emotional Abuse of High -Functioning Women (1998), The V-Spot, How to Talk to a Narcissist, How to Talk to a Borderline and a recent paper, “The Psychopathology of Terrorism” presented at the Rand Corporation and the International Psychohistorical Association. She is also an affiliate member for the New Center for Psychoanalysis.
Dr. David Gutmann, emeritus professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.
and
Dr. Nancy Kobrin, a psychoanalyst with a Ph.D. in romance and semitic languages, specializing in Aljamía and Old Spanish in Arabic script. She is an expert on the Minnesota Somali diaspora and a graduate of the Human Terrain System program at Leavenworth Kansas. Her new book is The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing. [3]
FP: Dr. Nancy Kobrin, Dr. Joanie Lachkar, Dr. David Gutmann and Dr. Nicolai Sennels, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
Dr. Sennels, let me begin with you.
As you referred to in our recent symposium [4], you are well aware — especially as a psychiatrist — of the vital role that bringing a woman sexual pleasure plays in a man’s life. If a man’s sexuality involves only bringing himself pleasure and satisfaction, and never involves bringing a woman pleasure, the consequences are not just devastating for the woman, but for the male himself. If this phenomenon occurs because the culture at large has shaped this disposition of males, and if this practice by males is therefore widespread and constitutes the norm, the effect on the male psyche in this culture, and on the culture at large, is perniciously harmful — to say the least. There are pathological and toxic results, which include not only the lust for terror against “the outsider,” but also against oneself — suicide.
The Muslim culture and religion, and the roots of jihad, clearly come to mind here.
What your thoughts to my introductory statement for our discussion here today?
Sennels: My findings are that growing up in the Muslim cultures is psychologically unhealthy on numerous realms. The positive attitude towards anger and the narcissistic concept of honor prevents many Muslims from maturing as human beings. Together with the racist and aggressive attitude towards non-Muslims, a strong identification with the Muslim Umma and favoring of Middle Age religious dogmas at the expense of common sense, human rights and science the Muslim mentality makes it impossible for most Muslims to integrate into our democratic, secular and civilized Western culture. Not only that: it makes Muslims into less happy and mentally healthy people. No wonder that the core of such a culture is based on the repression of sexuality and female qualities.
There is no doubt that Muslim men’s negative view on women has a high price not only for the women but also for the men and Muslim culture in general. We men receive a long row of qualities when we open up to women: empathy, the ability to function in groups without creating hierarchies and more mature ways of experiencing and expressing our emotions — these are among the most important.
Besides several ancient nature religions and Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism, Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was the first in the West to discover the importance of opening up to the opposite sex: men who suppresses women never really grow up. Shy and nerd-like computer geeks and aggressive male chauvinists are the two most typical results. Both types are often lonesome, feel “empty,” are sexually frustrated and in many cases perverse, easily depressed and socially incompetent. Since aggression is seen as positive in the warrior-like Muslim tribal culture the latter is most often the result in Islamic societies. A recent study in Germany lead by the former German minister of Justice Christian Pfeiffer concluded that “Religious Muslim boys are more violent [5]“. According to this gigantic research project involving intense interviewing of 45.000 teenagers, Muslim culture cultivates an unhealthy and aggressive Macho attitude among Muslim males.
Now Jamie, in terms of the specific issue of our discussion, when it comes to the male not bringing sexual pleasure to a woman, this has severe consequences not only on the woman, but also on the male and on the culture in general (if this is a standard cultural ethos, which is the case with Islam). The wish to bring happiness to one’s partner — especially sexual happiness — is fundamental for being able to experience and express love. Men who does not have this wish will be cut off from the maturing experience of learning from the kind of wisdom and emotional life that only women express fully. This leaves men less mature and less happy. The point is that the more you give, the more you get – on all levels. Men who joyfully see themselves as a source of bliss, satisfaction and happiness to their female partner have found the key to their own human growth and a successful relationship. Since Islam and the Muslim culture prevents men and women from freely meeting as equal partners, Muslims are cut off from this important cause of happiness and maturity. The result is the childish fanaticism and immature ways of handling emotions that clearly characterize Muslim societies. The propagation of the Islamic scriptures and Muslim males’ suppression of women and their ignoring of female qualities and need for happiness is the main course for the suffering and hate in Islamic societies. That terrorism arises is no surprise.
The suppression of women in Islam and Muslim culture is an effective tool in keeping its propagators aggressive and emotionally cold towards their infidel victims. If we manage to liberate the Muslim women, we have Islam cornered and removed its corner teeth. In Western societies, this can only be done by creating sufficient amounts of shelters for women fleeing from violent and suppressing husbands and installing strict laws on honor-related crimes. We already have around 40 shelters in Denmark. 70 percent [6] of the women contacting one of the biggest women shelters, Dannerhuset in Copenhagen, have “Middle Eastern back ground”. We also need to send female social workers into the immigrant homes to conduct regular interviews with the females to make sure that they feel safe and are free to use the many possibilities and rights that our countries allow them. If their male family members don’t like it they are free to leave the country.
We do not want to see the suppressive and uncivilized Islamic view on women get a hold in our countries. Finally, our Western welfare societies should only give economic support to the first two or three children. This might prevent Muslim families from moving to our countries and have a lot of children that often become a burden to society.
It also leaves the immigrant women more free to integrate and use their Western standard freedoms.
The liberation of women in Muslim countries is mainly done by diminishing the amount of child births. Being pregnant five times or more and raising the same amount of children leaves poor and uneducated mothers no chance to empower themselves. They are bound to their homes and completely dependent on their often not so gallant husbands. The most effective way is to pay people in poor countries to have less children. Instead of giving economical aid to corrupt dictators it should be given directly to the women of the families – just like the Nobel Prize winning micro loans. The amount of money should be inversely to the amount of children. Also no economical aid should be given to non-Western countries except if it is aimed at putting a lid on the over population. This would leave the women stronger and more free to live the life they want. A pleasant bonus is that it will better the economy and general human conditions, thereby lessening the possibly for religious fanaticism and conflicts – which again will diminish the flow of refugees to our part of the World.
FP: Dr. Sennels thank you.
Nancy Kobrin, give us your thoughts on the topic and on Dr. Sennels’ analysis.
Please touch on this in your answer: When Muslim males in their sexually repressive cultures get a glimpse, for one reason or another, of our female pop stars, let’s say beautiful female stars such as Byonce, Rihanna or Mariah Carey, etc., it is unsurprising what ferocious dread and rage enters their psyches. It is crucial to explore how and why this happens. First, these females clearly represent female beauty and female sexual self-determination. So the Muslim male faces a great threat immediately. We know the many reasons why. But let me narrow in on one dynamic:
Let us suppose that a Muslim male is faced with one of these women — who are in charge of their own sexuality — in a possible sexual entanglement. In other words, let’s picture the Muslim male here seeing these women and visualizing, even for a split second, the possibility of a sexual relationship with one of them. What is the thought process? We know that the Muslim male immediately faces, with terror, the reality of what would emerge in terms of a sexual encounter on an equal level of reciprocity. So, instead of just engaging in some kind of prison-like violent sexual aggression against a helpless, mutilated woman who has no rights of any kind, the Muslim male would have to try to function as a male to not only satisfy himself, but to also satisfy the woman. This means that, among other things, he would have to open himself up, not just for praise, but for possible judgment in terms of what kind of lover he is.
In other words, the woman afterwards will make a judgment and maybe, possibly, say something negative not only to him, but to someone else about him. She might even giggle about something she found insufficient and inadequate. She might even immediately dump him because of this — and might even laugh about it to her friends. This is what we call freedom — and one of the ingredients of the human condition that might surface within freedom.
One can just imagine the psychotic rage that results in the minds of many Muslim males in repressive Islamic cultures at the very notion and possibility of this reality. They would not only want to obliterate the woman for the reality of what she may think of their performance (and for what she may also say and do about it), but they would want to destroy the society that would allow this possibility. One of the products of this ferocious hatred of this ingredient of the human condition and its possibilities is, undoubtedly, jihad.
I would like you Dr, Kobrin, and the rest of the panel, to touch on this observation and how it applies to our discussion, thanks.
Kobrin: Pleasuring a woman — which means helping her achieve orgasm — is the key issue here. This sexual problem in the Middle East has not been fully appreciated by the West. It is not discussed in the Middle East because it is a subject of extreme shame that the men are impotent. Ironically we are dealing with shame-honor cultures who do not understand that the function of shame is not to willfully spill blood to cleanse honor. This is a cover-up for not having women who are truly free because of their own terrors and sense of vulnerability. This applies to Afghanistan and Somalia as they are Muslim shame-honor cultures as well.
Jamie, you have hit the nail on the head and I am not sure most of us are aware that we are dealing with psychotic thinking. This occurs when one is vilified and the other is devalued as the bad/hated or devalued object. This is a mechanism of defense known as splitting.
The Jihadi men can appear and present themselves as normal but they are not normal.
Obviously I do not want to sweepingly say that all Muslim males are stereotypically denying their females, However, given the fact that one does not hear moderate Muslim men discuss this issue of pleasuring women, we can tell that it is too sensitive of an issue. Even in the eye of the storm for moderate Muslim men, we could assume that this is not only a highly charged issue, but one that is extremely uncomfortable. Let alone think of how this could put them into a role of competing with other men especially in democratic societies where domination and control of women are not a valued tradition. It has been said too that this is one of the reason white western men convert to Islam in significant numbers because they are at a loss as to how to socially deal with western women.
Given that we are dealing with a shame-honor society, we might consider the following psychological defenses as playing a major role:
1. Splitting, that is, thinking in terms of black and white.
2. A highly enmeshed markedly paranoid family unit.
3. Boundary confusion.
4. Unspoken sexual abuse.
5. Terror reigns, hence we encounter governmental abuse and dictatorships.
6. Shame blame when the male is emasculated, the female is severely punished, nay obliterated — female genital mutilation, honor killing etc.
I agree with Dr. Sennels concerning the high rate of frequency of domestic violence which he describes in Denmark. The Centre for Social Cohesion in the UK did geo-mapping of where they found domestic violence and the jihadis. What a coincidence! There was tremendous overlap. Such violence is a shamefully revealing phenomenon that the ummah does not want to address in appropriate ways.
By contrast look at the naked midriffs of young free Israeli women, their tummies showing and expressing themselves dancing freely in this video [7]. As you know I have been working on this problem for years but it was when I was watching an Israel music video by one of the best funky jazz/r&b guitarists, Dudu Tassa in a song called “Zouzi” that I realized why the Saudis must really be peaved with the Israelis living so close by. It’s not just because of the verses of hatred of the Jew in the Qur’an but also the freedom of its open society.
Clearly, Hamas and Hezbollah can’t even remotely compete, that is why they resort to bonding through rage, hatred, roadside bombs, missiles and suicide bombers, etc.
Finally, I think that Dr. Sennels has a splendid idea about encouraging less children. However, it flies in the face of doing Jihad through demographics. But from a child-rearing and maternal attachment point of view, Dr. Sennels has it right. Less is more and also better and healthier. Oddly by denying women pleasure they deny themselves pleasure. Pain gets confused with pleasure and viola, you have sado-masochism.
FP: Very profound Dr. Kobrin. John Racy, a psychiatrist with much experience in Arab societies, has touched on many of these themes. He has noted how the Islamic culture promotes a threatening sense of inadequacy in men (and therefore women) and that impotence (and related) problems among them are common phenomena.
In his classic work, The Closed Circle, David Pryce-Jones discusses these sexual pathologies in the Arab world and notes that it is therefore no surprise that the Arab male is obsessed with proving his sexual superiority. This obsession finds its expression by targeting the Western infidel with violence. Thus, it’s not really that much of a mystery: by not veiling its own women and by giving them personal and sexual freedom and pleasure, the West enrages Islamists, leading them to unleash terror in a furious attempt to keep their own women enslaved, sexually unfulfilled, and their own personal sexual impotence hidden. (See Chapter 11, “The Seeds of Hate,” in United in Hate [8] for a further discussion.)
Lachkar: This topic borders on the broader picture: the violation of human rights that exists throughout the Middle East. The degradation of women in the Muslim world is one theme inextricably linked to not only the role of women and their functions, but to the power of their maternal capacities and sexualities.
As an example of such violations, it has been noted that in some Arab countries, as well as in other parts of the world, clitoridectomy, or female circumcision, is still practiced. It is most often performed on females between the ages of seven or eight (before menstruation). This is a practice whereby midwives and female family members grasp the girls legs apart to expose her genitals. Then a sharp razor is used to cut off the clitoris. According to Lloyd deMause, it is a harsh and perverse act, an enactment of one’s frustration and aggression directed toward the innocent young victimized girls.
DeMause goes so far as to pronounce this act as the gateway to trauma and destruction not only for the child, but the society in general. Girls not only go through excruciating pain, but often faint from shock (no anesthetic), suffer from such after effects as blood poisoning, childbirth complications, and unbearable pain during intercourse. Some report constant urinary tract infections, infertility, and sometimes die from hemorrhage.
It is important, by the way, to make a distinction with male circumcision. What is done to a boy is circumcision, while what is done to girl/woman is termed ‘genital mutilation.’
In keeping with the theme of this discussion, the circumcision is designed to curtail a women’s sexuality and keep her repressed. This can only leave us to speculate that if Muslim men are programmed to think of women as chattel or used as sex objects for their own pleasure, how do the women achieve sexual fulfillment?
How does a Muslim man rejoice in the woman’s pleasure when he has been pre-scripted/pre-programmed to not only devalue her as a sexual object, but to deprive her of any pleasure? What seems to be most pervasive is not the sexual act in and of itself, but the idea that there is always a third bedfellow, a Koran that testifies that the way to avoid sin is to oppress women to maintain a shame/honor society. The woman can easily shame and dishonor her man by presenting herself as none less than the virgin the man will meet in Paradise, but until he gets there she must play and fit into the role of this perfect virginal paradigm. My fantasy is that as he lusts after her, he then repents by persecuting himself and maybe even abusing his wife for behaving as she did at the “scene of the crime.” Although none of us are there to observe, as the Kafkian bug on the wall, we can only speculate as to what really goes on the bedroom.
I believe these thoughts are in keeping with Dr. Kobrin’s acknowledgement of an Arab-Muslim culture — a shame-honor culture. I might add how this differs from Judeo-Christian culture, which is based on sin and redemption, evoking guilt as opposed to shame. This difference is significant in that guilt tends to get turned inward against the self as self-punishment whereas shame is turned outward and needs to destroy the object/women who dishonored the male.
Dr. Kobrin rightfully refers to this as the psychological defense of splitting. The bad lustful “baby boy self” projects onto the devalued object, and therefore since he is fused with her he must destroy or humiliate her. Dr. Kobrin’s new book, The Banality of Suicide [9], details the toxic pathological attachment with the maternal object, where she not only parallels domestic violence to universal political terrorism as complimentary terrorism, but there is a synergistic and hence a power-terrorizing effect. There is no doubt that Muslim men’s negative view of women has made them and their society pay a high price.
Dr. Sennels notes that the Muslim culture and religion, and the roots of jihad, are linked to man denying a woman pleasure. The point I would expand on is not the sexual act in and of itself, but the entire theme of a culture of deprivation and envy. I agree with Dr. Sennels that this practice by a male can lead to devastating effects not only on his sense of manhood but upon an entire culture heading toward death and terror. In response to Jamie’s comment about “lust for terror against the outsider,” and this can pave the way to suicide, that if the deprivation becomes more than the psyche can hold or contain, I would imagine there is no way out of this toxic inferno. Dr. Sennels also nails it when he calls our attention to the amount of childbirths. One might refer to the uterus used as a subversive act of terror.
Jamie presents an interesting scenario: how would a Muslim man (and it is clear we’re referring to Muslim men who have internalized the misogynist Muslim culture) respond sexually in the face of a “normal” sexual inhibited woman? My guess, he would act in one or two ways: display a false self or a persona to hide his shame, and go after her aggressively, or he would end up feeling grossly humiliated if she were to see through his masked self. Although Kobrin does not make reference to the false self, she does confirm that the “Jihadi men can appear and present themselves as norm, but they are not normal.” Nevertheless, what is important is not how the jihadi male responds to the modern female, but how he defends an entire culture trained to repress such women so he can maintain his sense of control.
Gutmann: We all seem to be pretty much in agreement that the typical Muslim male’s stance towards women is characterized by barely disguised anger and a need to control the woman’s sexual response and pleasures. And these same neurotic tendencies are, in their turn, defenses against the man’s fear of female sexuality (a fear that can lead to impotence) and against the shame which attends such fear.
The unexpurgated “Arabian Nights” dramatize these fears. In these lurid accounts, the woman is regularly presented as sexually insatiable, just waiting for the chance to copulate with any inferior man — a slave, a beggar, a leper – who’s available, once her husband is out of the house. Her husband’s honor is perpetually in pawn to an explosively sexual woman, who is perpetually looking for her chance to dishonor him with degraded men.
The Muslim male’s fear of unchecked female sexuality is managed through legal as well as clinical means. Clinically, there is the widespread practice of clitoroidectomy, which in effect surgically removes the orgasmic female “organ.” And on the legal side we see the insistence, on the part of immigrant Muslim males, for host countries to allow the practice of Sharia law — the laws which for the most part limit female rights and freedoms, particularly in the sexual domain. The Muslim males want to enjoy their freedom from the restraints of the medieval societies that they have left, but they want to continue imposing — now in the free society – those same restrictions on their wives.
When these measures fail, there are, of course, honor killings.
On a larger scale, there is radical Islam’s ambition to do away with Israel, that nest of liberated women in the heart of the Umma, and to impose the Caliphate on the non-Islamic world. The Muslim fears modernization because it leads inevitably to female liberation — including sexual liberation, and they have gone to war against that threat. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion — probably because so many infidels share the Muslim’s fear of the sexually liberated woman.
For me, this question remains: why are Muslim males so intimidated by the full sexual response of the female? Does it represent the retaliatory rage of their oppressed women? Does it represent the bursting forth of their deeply hidden and shame-generating female identifications? (perhaps the suicide bomber’s fascination with death-dealing explosions reflects the Muslim male’s fear of and fascination with explosive female sexuality?).
Perhaps our Psychoanalysts, Drs. Kobrin, Sennels and Lachkar, may have some answers.
Sennels: Though I would prefer to use the term narcissistic rage (instead of psychotic rage) I completely agree with Jamie. The repression and conscious ignoring of female sexuality in the Muslim world has a very simple and profound reason: Muslim men find it hard to handle the fact that women’s sexuality is far superior to the men’s. Most women can make love for longer time than men and many women can continue the sexual act after having orgasm – some can even have more than one orgasm during sex.
The question is: Why are Muslim men so vulnerable? How did Muslim men end up on such a fragile pedestal? The answer is that Islam and Muslim culture depends on male aggression and needs to suppress female sensitivity. The reason for this is that this culture is aiming on conquering and domination. In such a culture, female softness and empathy would be distracting and a hurdle. In such a culture, men are simply worth more than women. This is the reason that Muslim boys are treated as kings from birth and therefore develop a fragile glass-like personality that is unable to handle defeat, inferiority and criticism.
I am sure that Dr. Kobrin and Dr. Gutmann are right about Israel: It is an unwelcome showcase in the Middle East that risks tempting the area’s Muslim women by promoting gender equality, human rights and freedom. This of course provokes the insecure Muslim men and contributes to their hate and wish for destruction of Israel and Western civilization in general. The hate of women is in this way is very closely connected with Islam’s wish for destruction of the free world.
Dr. Lachkar has a very interesting point: Muslim women – and their husbands – are in no doubt in a deep dilemma during the sexual act. On the one side the man wants the woman to display enjoyment to excite him and to confirm his abilities as a lover. On the other hand, she is expected not to enjoy it too much… How can love grow in such a garden? How can a culture bring happiness to people when it does not allow the women to be happy and does not allow the men to rejoice in women’s happiness? Islam does not care about such questions: As everybody who studies the Quran knows, love and happiness are not the goals of Islam.
Kobrin: Jamie, you make the observation of targeting the infidel. I would stress that within this mindset, the other is the female. It doesn’t matter if you are male and other, you are still the female and a threat. The thinking is very simplistic because of the splitting — male vs. other = i.e. female. The splitting compensates for the inability to integrate self as a whole person and separate from one’s mother psychologically. Everything gets split off and projected outwards but nothing is really resolved.
But why? Because the male identity is so confused due to not being permitted to separate from the female who has no power. The male baby is misused by the mother as her narcissistic source of power. This in turn strips the male baby of ever feeling safe to trust, because he is so bound up in his mother’s identity. The unhealthy dependency feeds into the erotics of Arab Muslim culture and other shame-honor cultures.
They are not only just confused, they do not have a sense of their own healthy empowerment. If they did, they would not attack and destroy the female. I ascribe to what Dr. Gutmann says about the suicide bomber when he writes:
“Does it represent the bursting forth of their deeply hidden and shame-generating female identifications? (perhaps the suicide bomber’s fascination with death-dealing explosions reflects the Muslim male’s fear of and fascination with explosive female sexuality?)”
I would add that this explosiveness is also entwined with the “explosiveness” and bloody nature of birth, hence life. Its opposite is death.
I won’t quibble so much with Dr. Sennels about narcissistic rage. To me there is always a hidden component of the psychotic because of this significant distortion about the female. A well encapsulated psychosis occurs in borderline and narcissistic pathology.
Dr. Lachkar raises the broader issue of human rights violations in the Middle East. This is key because the violations are tinged with the abuse of the female. We may surmise that this public behavior is extremely revealing because they have externalized rageful behavior against the other. We can hazard the guess that the public persona is emblematic of the private given the nature of cruelty. Most of life is psychosexual in nature though many would probably deny that because it arouses too much in them and that is scary as it makes them feel “out of control.”
The unspoken problem of not being able to pleasure women is really one of sadomasochism. Pain is confused with pleasure. What arouses one sexually is learned early in life so if as Dr. Sennels says that this is a culture hostile to pleasure, that means that it is going to be very difficult to undo the sadomasochism of arousal. I would even suggest that this sadomasochism which infuses Arab Muslim culture is very attractive to those on the left in the West as voyeurs. However, this is probably a subject for another symposium.
Lachkar: I remember attending a seminar about terrorism in the Middle East and during the question and answer period I mustered up the courage and blurted out a comment about how I felt the entire conflict to be linked to the role of women and their persecutors. The reaction was not only negative but they accused me of being rather “simplistic.” After reviewing the comments of my colleagues in this symposium, I might take this view a step further, and paraphrase the well known phrase: “Drive the Jews into the Sea” as a replacement to “Drive the Women into the Sea!” This is in accordance with Dr. Kobrin’s dramatic view of free Israeli neighboring women cavorting around in skimpy bikinis!
Dr. Gutmann also offers justification, first when he states, ”The Muslim fears that modernization leads inevitably to female liberation,” and second his reference to clitoridectomy, the process which surgically removes the orgasmic female organ of pleasure. Nonie Darwish, dramatically states how drastic and traumatic this is, and how the effort to reduce female orgasmic pleasure is in part to impose Sharia law throughout the world. Dr. Sennels also asks: why are men so vulnerable and agrees with Jamie that when it comes to sex, women are far more powerful and superior on several realms. This is a reality that the Muslim male cannot tolerate. Vulnerability has always meant something negative to the Muslim male, and he interprets it with weakness, impotence and smallness. Ironically, in clinical practice, to achieve vulnerability is the goal, especially with male abusers who think being a bully is a sign of strength and masculinity. So it makes sense for insecure men to destroy the power of the women and to diminish them into victims. In this way, fragile men think they are getting rid of the “weak” parts of themselves that they cannot tolerate. In psychoanalytic terms, this is referred to as projective identification.
Dr. Kobrin was on the verge of quibbling Dr. Sennels about narcissistic rage. Since she didn’t, I would like to take on that challenge. I do not see anything narcissistic with the collective psyche of the terrorist, In fact, I would go so far as to say they share a more collective borderline disorder — of even a psychotic one. Narcissists use women as self objects, women who empower their grandiose omnipotent self. A self object is respected. For example, Mrs. Milosevic was an empowering self mirroring object for her husband. She gave him the okay to murder and slaughter thousands of Albanians. The Muslim male cannot make use of a powerful women as a self object because his culture and his forefather have already diminished her existence. Second, narcissistic rage takes on an entirely different shape. The narcissist, when personally injured, will withdraw and go into isolation. The borderline, on the other hand, when injured, will spend the rest of his life retaliating, revenging and getting even. “We will not stop until we have destroyed every infidel through bombing, honor killings or whatever it takes.”
Will Smith in The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and The Clash of Arab Civilizations (2010) reinforces the two of the most perverse ways that the woman is viewed as powerful. First, her womb used as a weapon: “The womb of the Arab woman is her strongest weapon.” Secondly, the veil used as a protection or shield, not to guard against man’s lustful impulses, but rather to be used for her own protection. In other words, it is her choice to wear the veil as opposed to it being an object thrust upon her (Smith, 2010).
To conclude, I would like to end with a quote from Golda Meir, “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Again thank you Jamie and everyone on this panel for your insightful contributions, and even where we differ, I hope this psychodynamic view of the conflict will open a new vision and way of thinking.
Gutmann: This time around I’m getting compelling answers to the question I raised in my first post, namely: why the excessive fear of female sexuality among Arab men?
Dr. Sennels suggests the possibility of “Vagina Envy” among Arab men, who feel shamed by a female sexual response stronger than their own. Dr. Kobrin refers to what men fear as a toxic identification with the mother, while Dr. Lachkar explores the ways in which Arab men use women as dumping grounds for denied aspects of the self. These insights pretty much cover the waterfront. However, in addition to these possibilities, Arab male homosexuality [10] – hinted at by Drs Kobrin and Lachkar – should also be considered.
Phyllis Chesler recently reminded us [11] that homosexuality and pedophilia are deeply established Arab traits, and clinical experience teaches us that, when the homosexual drive comes under repression, it can lead to precisely the kinds of paranoid fears of the sexual woman that we have been considering. As we know, the repressed homosexual identifies with the female sexual role, and, like the woman, wants to be penetrated by men. This wish, in the mind of the repressed homosexual, is intolerable, and is projected on to the spouse or girl friend: it is she who desires sex with other men. This projection leads to an associated fear of the female sexual response: the stronger that drive, the more likely that the woman will seek multiple partners to satisfy it. As a consequence, the female sexual appetite must be surgically blunted, and the sexually mature, unappeasable woman must be kept in purdah (out of sight), away from temptation.
When these measures fail, there is always the venerable practice of Honor Killing to fall back on.
Strange that the world is wracked by terrorism, women are kept in bondage, and we face nuclear war because of the quirks in the Islamic unconscious that this panel has explored. Psychoanalysis has gone out of fashion, but its methods and insights are needed more than ever.
FP: Dr. Nancy Kobrin, Dr. Joanie Lachkar, Dr. David Gutmann and Dr. Nicolai Sennels, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.
By Jamie Glazov
www.frontpagemag.com
Editor’s note: To get the whole story behind why Islam demonizes and disallows female sexual pleasure, read Jamie Glazov’s most recent book, ” United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror [12].”
[1] “honor” killings: http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/764/worldwide-trends-in-honor-killings
[2] nicolaisennels@gmail.com.: mailto:nicolaisennels@gmail.com
[3] The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing.: http://www.amazon.com/Banality-Suicide-Terrorism-Psychology-Islamic/dp/1597975044
[4] our recent symposium: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/21/a-psychiatric-conference-on-truthful-girl-2/
[5] Religious Muslim boys are more violent: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100606-27673.html
[6] 70 percent: http://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/288719:Danmark%20%E2%80%93%20Indvandrerkvinder-fylder-krisecentre
[7] this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i9GmKz5FFk
[8] United in Hate: http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071076
[9] The Banality of Suicide: http://frontpagemag.com../2010/04/13/the-dr-ruth-of-counter-terrorism/
[10] Arab male homosexuality: http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=852
[11] Phyllis Chesler recently reminded us: http://frontpagemag.com../2010/07/19/in-defense-of-muslim-women/
[12] United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror: http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239336437&sr=1-1
Dr. Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who worked for several years with young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen prison. He is the author of Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist’s Experience from the Copenhagen Municipality. The book will be out in English later this year. He can be contact at: nicolaisennels@gmail.com. [2]
Dr. Joanie Lachkar, a licensed Marriage and Family therapist in private practice in Brentwood and Tarzana, California, who teaches psychoanalysis and is the author of The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Marital Treatment (1992, The Many Faces of Abuse: Treating the Emotional Abuse of High -Functioning Women (1998), The V-Spot, How to Talk to a Narcissist, How to Talk to a Borderline and a recent paper, “The Psychopathology of Terrorism” presented at the Rand Corporation and the International Psychohistorical Association. She is also an affiliate member for the New Center for Psychoanalysis.
Dr. David Gutmann, emeritus professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.
and
Dr. Nancy Kobrin, a psychoanalyst with a Ph.D. in romance and semitic languages, specializing in Aljamía and Old Spanish in Arabic script. She is an expert on the Minnesota Somali diaspora and a graduate of the Human Terrain System program at Leavenworth Kansas. Her new book is The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing. [3]
FP: Dr. Nancy Kobrin, Dr. Joanie Lachkar, Dr. David Gutmann and Dr. Nicolai Sennels, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
Dr. Sennels, let me begin with you.
As you referred to in our recent symposium [4], you are well aware — especially as a psychiatrist — of the vital role that bringing a woman sexual pleasure plays in a man’s life. If a man’s sexuality involves only bringing himself pleasure and satisfaction, and never involves bringing a woman pleasure, the consequences are not just devastating for the woman, but for the male himself. If this phenomenon occurs because the culture at large has shaped this disposition of males, and if this practice by males is therefore widespread and constitutes the norm, the effect on the male psyche in this culture, and on the culture at large, is perniciously harmful — to say the least. There are pathological and toxic results, which include not only the lust for terror against “the outsider,” but also against oneself — suicide.
The Muslim culture and religion, and the roots of jihad, clearly come to mind here.
What your thoughts to my introductory statement for our discussion here today?
Sennels: My findings are that growing up in the Muslim cultures is psychologically unhealthy on numerous realms. The positive attitude towards anger and the narcissistic concept of honor prevents many Muslims from maturing as human beings. Together with the racist and aggressive attitude towards non-Muslims, a strong identification with the Muslim Umma and favoring of Middle Age religious dogmas at the expense of common sense, human rights and science the Muslim mentality makes it impossible for most Muslims to integrate into our democratic, secular and civilized Western culture. Not only that: it makes Muslims into less happy and mentally healthy people. No wonder that the core of such a culture is based on the repression of sexuality and female qualities.
There is no doubt that Muslim men’s negative view on women has a high price not only for the women but also for the men and Muslim culture in general. We men receive a long row of qualities when we open up to women: empathy, the ability to function in groups without creating hierarchies and more mature ways of experiencing and expressing our emotions — these are among the most important.
Besides several ancient nature religions and Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism, Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was the first in the West to discover the importance of opening up to the opposite sex: men who suppresses women never really grow up. Shy and nerd-like computer geeks and aggressive male chauvinists are the two most typical results. Both types are often lonesome, feel “empty,” are sexually frustrated and in many cases perverse, easily depressed and socially incompetent. Since aggression is seen as positive in the warrior-like Muslim tribal culture the latter is most often the result in Islamic societies. A recent study in Germany lead by the former German minister of Justice Christian Pfeiffer concluded that “Religious Muslim boys are more violent [5]“. According to this gigantic research project involving intense interviewing of 45.000 teenagers, Muslim culture cultivates an unhealthy and aggressive Macho attitude among Muslim males.
Now Jamie, in terms of the specific issue of our discussion, when it comes to the male not bringing sexual pleasure to a woman, this has severe consequences not only on the woman, but also on the male and on the culture in general (if this is a standard cultural ethos, which is the case with Islam). The wish to bring happiness to one’s partner — especially sexual happiness — is fundamental for being able to experience and express love. Men who does not have this wish will be cut off from the maturing experience of learning from the kind of wisdom and emotional life that only women express fully. This leaves men less mature and less happy. The point is that the more you give, the more you get – on all levels. Men who joyfully see themselves as a source of bliss, satisfaction and happiness to their female partner have found the key to their own human growth and a successful relationship. Since Islam and the Muslim culture prevents men and women from freely meeting as equal partners, Muslims are cut off from this important cause of happiness and maturity. The result is the childish fanaticism and immature ways of handling emotions that clearly characterize Muslim societies. The propagation of the Islamic scriptures and Muslim males’ suppression of women and their ignoring of female qualities and need for happiness is the main course for the suffering and hate in Islamic societies. That terrorism arises is no surprise.
The suppression of women in Islam and Muslim culture is an effective tool in keeping its propagators aggressive and emotionally cold towards their infidel victims. If we manage to liberate the Muslim women, we have Islam cornered and removed its corner teeth. In Western societies, this can only be done by creating sufficient amounts of shelters for women fleeing from violent and suppressing husbands and installing strict laws on honor-related crimes. We already have around 40 shelters in Denmark. 70 percent [6] of the women contacting one of the biggest women shelters, Dannerhuset in Copenhagen, have “Middle Eastern back ground”. We also need to send female social workers into the immigrant homes to conduct regular interviews with the females to make sure that they feel safe and are free to use the many possibilities and rights that our countries allow them. If their male family members don’t like it they are free to leave the country.
We do not want to see the suppressive and uncivilized Islamic view on women get a hold in our countries. Finally, our Western welfare societies should only give economic support to the first two or three children. This might prevent Muslim families from moving to our countries and have a lot of children that often become a burden to society.
It also leaves the immigrant women more free to integrate and use their Western standard freedoms.
The liberation of women in Muslim countries is mainly done by diminishing the amount of child births. Being pregnant five times or more and raising the same amount of children leaves poor and uneducated mothers no chance to empower themselves. They are bound to their homes and completely dependent on their often not so gallant husbands. The most effective way is to pay people in poor countries to have less children. Instead of giving economical aid to corrupt dictators it should be given directly to the women of the families – just like the Nobel Prize winning micro loans. The amount of money should be inversely to the amount of children. Also no economical aid should be given to non-Western countries except if it is aimed at putting a lid on the over population. This would leave the women stronger and more free to live the life they want. A pleasant bonus is that it will better the economy and general human conditions, thereby lessening the possibly for religious fanaticism and conflicts – which again will diminish the flow of refugees to our part of the World.
FP: Dr. Sennels thank you.
Nancy Kobrin, give us your thoughts on the topic and on Dr. Sennels’ analysis.
Please touch on this in your answer: When Muslim males in their sexually repressive cultures get a glimpse, for one reason or another, of our female pop stars, let’s say beautiful female stars such as Byonce, Rihanna or Mariah Carey, etc., it is unsurprising what ferocious dread and rage enters their psyches. It is crucial to explore how and why this happens. First, these females clearly represent female beauty and female sexual self-determination. So the Muslim male faces a great threat immediately. We know the many reasons why. But let me narrow in on one dynamic:
Let us suppose that a Muslim male is faced with one of these women — who are in charge of their own sexuality — in a possible sexual entanglement. In other words, let’s picture the Muslim male here seeing these women and visualizing, even for a split second, the possibility of a sexual relationship with one of them. What is the thought process? We know that the Muslim male immediately faces, with terror, the reality of what would emerge in terms of a sexual encounter on an equal level of reciprocity. So, instead of just engaging in some kind of prison-like violent sexual aggression against a helpless, mutilated woman who has no rights of any kind, the Muslim male would have to try to function as a male to not only satisfy himself, but to also satisfy the woman. This means that, among other things, he would have to open himself up, not just for praise, but for possible judgment in terms of what kind of lover he is.
In other words, the woman afterwards will make a judgment and maybe, possibly, say something negative not only to him, but to someone else about him. She might even giggle about something she found insufficient and inadequate. She might even immediately dump him because of this — and might even laugh about it to her friends. This is what we call freedom — and one of the ingredients of the human condition that might surface within freedom.
One can just imagine the psychotic rage that results in the minds of many Muslim males in repressive Islamic cultures at the very notion and possibility of this reality. They would not only want to obliterate the woman for the reality of what she may think of their performance (and for what she may also say and do about it), but they would want to destroy the society that would allow this possibility. One of the products of this ferocious hatred of this ingredient of the human condition and its possibilities is, undoubtedly, jihad.
I would like you Dr, Kobrin, and the rest of the panel, to touch on this observation and how it applies to our discussion, thanks.
Kobrin: Pleasuring a woman — which means helping her achieve orgasm — is the key issue here. This sexual problem in the Middle East has not been fully appreciated by the West. It is not discussed in the Middle East because it is a subject of extreme shame that the men are impotent. Ironically we are dealing with shame-honor cultures who do not understand that the function of shame is not to willfully spill blood to cleanse honor. This is a cover-up for not having women who are truly free because of their own terrors and sense of vulnerability. This applies to Afghanistan and Somalia as they are Muslim shame-honor cultures as well.
Jamie, you have hit the nail on the head and I am not sure most of us are aware that we are dealing with psychotic thinking. This occurs when one is vilified and the other is devalued as the bad/hated or devalued object. This is a mechanism of defense known as splitting.
The Jihadi men can appear and present themselves as normal but they are not normal.
Obviously I do not want to sweepingly say that all Muslim males are stereotypically denying their females, However, given the fact that one does not hear moderate Muslim men discuss this issue of pleasuring women, we can tell that it is too sensitive of an issue. Even in the eye of the storm for moderate Muslim men, we could assume that this is not only a highly charged issue, but one that is extremely uncomfortable. Let alone think of how this could put them into a role of competing with other men especially in democratic societies where domination and control of women are not a valued tradition. It has been said too that this is one of the reason white western men convert to Islam in significant numbers because they are at a loss as to how to socially deal with western women.
Given that we are dealing with a shame-honor society, we might consider the following psychological defenses as playing a major role:
1. Splitting, that is, thinking in terms of black and white.
2. A highly enmeshed markedly paranoid family unit.
3. Boundary confusion.
4. Unspoken sexual abuse.
5. Terror reigns, hence we encounter governmental abuse and dictatorships.
6. Shame blame when the male is emasculated, the female is severely punished, nay obliterated — female genital mutilation, honor killing etc.
I agree with Dr. Sennels concerning the high rate of frequency of domestic violence which he describes in Denmark. The Centre for Social Cohesion in the UK did geo-mapping of where they found domestic violence and the jihadis. What a coincidence! There was tremendous overlap. Such violence is a shamefully revealing phenomenon that the ummah does not want to address in appropriate ways.
By contrast look at the naked midriffs of young free Israeli women, their tummies showing and expressing themselves dancing freely in this video [7]. As you know I have been working on this problem for years but it was when I was watching an Israel music video by one of the best funky jazz/r&b guitarists, Dudu Tassa in a song called “Zouzi” that I realized why the Saudis must really be peaved with the Israelis living so close by. It’s not just because of the verses of hatred of the Jew in the Qur’an but also the freedom of its open society.
Clearly, Hamas and Hezbollah can’t even remotely compete, that is why they resort to bonding through rage, hatred, roadside bombs, missiles and suicide bombers, etc.
Finally, I think that Dr. Sennels has a splendid idea about encouraging less children. However, it flies in the face of doing Jihad through demographics. But from a child-rearing and maternal attachment point of view, Dr. Sennels has it right. Less is more and also better and healthier. Oddly by denying women pleasure they deny themselves pleasure. Pain gets confused with pleasure and viola, you have sado-masochism.
FP: Very profound Dr. Kobrin. John Racy, a psychiatrist with much experience in Arab societies, has touched on many of these themes. He has noted how the Islamic culture promotes a threatening sense of inadequacy in men (and therefore women) and that impotence (and related) problems among them are common phenomena.
In his classic work, The Closed Circle, David Pryce-Jones discusses these sexual pathologies in the Arab world and notes that it is therefore no surprise that the Arab male is obsessed with proving his sexual superiority. This obsession finds its expression by targeting the Western infidel with violence. Thus, it’s not really that much of a mystery: by not veiling its own women and by giving them personal and sexual freedom and pleasure, the West enrages Islamists, leading them to unleash terror in a furious attempt to keep their own women enslaved, sexually unfulfilled, and their own personal sexual impotence hidden. (See Chapter 11, “The Seeds of Hate,” in United in Hate [8] for a further discussion.)
Lachkar: This topic borders on the broader picture: the violation of human rights that exists throughout the Middle East. The degradation of women in the Muslim world is one theme inextricably linked to not only the role of women and their functions, but to the power of their maternal capacities and sexualities.
As an example of such violations, it has been noted that in some Arab countries, as well as in other parts of the world, clitoridectomy, or female circumcision, is still practiced. It is most often performed on females between the ages of seven or eight (before menstruation). This is a practice whereby midwives and female family members grasp the girls legs apart to expose her genitals. Then a sharp razor is used to cut off the clitoris. According to Lloyd deMause, it is a harsh and perverse act, an enactment of one’s frustration and aggression directed toward the innocent young victimized girls.
DeMause goes so far as to pronounce this act as the gateway to trauma and destruction not only for the child, but the society in general. Girls not only go through excruciating pain, but often faint from shock (no anesthetic), suffer from such after effects as blood poisoning, childbirth complications, and unbearable pain during intercourse. Some report constant urinary tract infections, infertility, and sometimes die from hemorrhage.
It is important, by the way, to make a distinction with male circumcision. What is done to a boy is circumcision, while what is done to girl/woman is termed ‘genital mutilation.’
In keeping with the theme of this discussion, the circumcision is designed to curtail a women’s sexuality and keep her repressed. This can only leave us to speculate that if Muslim men are programmed to think of women as chattel or used as sex objects for their own pleasure, how do the women achieve sexual fulfillment?
How does a Muslim man rejoice in the woman’s pleasure when he has been pre-scripted/pre-programmed to not only devalue her as a sexual object, but to deprive her of any pleasure? What seems to be most pervasive is not the sexual act in and of itself, but the idea that there is always a third bedfellow, a Koran that testifies that the way to avoid sin is to oppress women to maintain a shame/honor society. The woman can easily shame and dishonor her man by presenting herself as none less than the virgin the man will meet in Paradise, but until he gets there she must play and fit into the role of this perfect virginal paradigm. My fantasy is that as he lusts after her, he then repents by persecuting himself and maybe even abusing his wife for behaving as she did at the “scene of the crime.” Although none of us are there to observe, as the Kafkian bug on the wall, we can only speculate as to what really goes on the bedroom.
I believe these thoughts are in keeping with Dr. Kobrin’s acknowledgement of an Arab-Muslim culture — a shame-honor culture. I might add how this differs from Judeo-Christian culture, which is based on sin and redemption, evoking guilt as opposed to shame. This difference is significant in that guilt tends to get turned inward against the self as self-punishment whereas shame is turned outward and needs to destroy the object/women who dishonored the male.
Dr. Kobrin rightfully refers to this as the psychological defense of splitting. The bad lustful “baby boy self” projects onto the devalued object, and therefore since he is fused with her he must destroy or humiliate her. Dr. Kobrin’s new book, The Banality of Suicide [9], details the toxic pathological attachment with the maternal object, where she not only parallels domestic violence to universal political terrorism as complimentary terrorism, but there is a synergistic and hence a power-terrorizing effect. There is no doubt that Muslim men’s negative view of women has made them and their society pay a high price.
Dr. Sennels notes that the Muslim culture and religion, and the roots of jihad, are linked to man denying a woman pleasure. The point I would expand on is not the sexual act in and of itself, but the entire theme of a culture of deprivation and envy. I agree with Dr. Sennels that this practice by a male can lead to devastating effects not only on his sense of manhood but upon an entire culture heading toward death and terror. In response to Jamie’s comment about “lust for terror against the outsider,” and this can pave the way to suicide, that if the deprivation becomes more than the psyche can hold or contain, I would imagine there is no way out of this toxic inferno. Dr. Sennels also nails it when he calls our attention to the amount of childbirths. One might refer to the uterus used as a subversive act of terror.
Jamie presents an interesting scenario: how would a Muslim man (and it is clear we’re referring to Muslim men who have internalized the misogynist Muslim culture) respond sexually in the face of a “normal” sexual inhibited woman? My guess, he would act in one or two ways: display a false self or a persona to hide his shame, and go after her aggressively, or he would end up feeling grossly humiliated if she were to see through his masked self. Although Kobrin does not make reference to the false self, she does confirm that the “Jihadi men can appear and present themselves as norm, but they are not normal.” Nevertheless, what is important is not how the jihadi male responds to the modern female, but how he defends an entire culture trained to repress such women so he can maintain his sense of control.
Gutmann: We all seem to be pretty much in agreement that the typical Muslim male’s stance towards women is characterized by barely disguised anger and a need to control the woman’s sexual response and pleasures. And these same neurotic tendencies are, in their turn, defenses against the man’s fear of female sexuality (a fear that can lead to impotence) and against the shame which attends such fear.
The unexpurgated “Arabian Nights” dramatize these fears. In these lurid accounts, the woman is regularly presented as sexually insatiable, just waiting for the chance to copulate with any inferior man — a slave, a beggar, a leper – who’s available, once her husband is out of the house. Her husband’s honor is perpetually in pawn to an explosively sexual woman, who is perpetually looking for her chance to dishonor him with degraded men.
The Muslim male’s fear of unchecked female sexuality is managed through legal as well as clinical means. Clinically, there is the widespread practice of clitoroidectomy, which in effect surgically removes the orgasmic female “organ.” And on the legal side we see the insistence, on the part of immigrant Muslim males, for host countries to allow the practice of Sharia law — the laws which for the most part limit female rights and freedoms, particularly in the sexual domain. The Muslim males want to enjoy their freedom from the restraints of the medieval societies that they have left, but they want to continue imposing — now in the free society – those same restrictions on their wives.
When these measures fail, there are, of course, honor killings.
On a larger scale, there is radical Islam’s ambition to do away with Israel, that nest of liberated women in the heart of the Umma, and to impose the Caliphate on the non-Islamic world. The Muslim fears modernization because it leads inevitably to female liberation — including sexual liberation, and they have gone to war against that threat. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion — probably because so many infidels share the Muslim’s fear of the sexually liberated woman.
For me, this question remains: why are Muslim males so intimidated by the full sexual response of the female? Does it represent the retaliatory rage of their oppressed women? Does it represent the bursting forth of their deeply hidden and shame-generating female identifications? (perhaps the suicide bomber’s fascination with death-dealing explosions reflects the Muslim male’s fear of and fascination with explosive female sexuality?).
Perhaps our Psychoanalysts, Drs. Kobrin, Sennels and Lachkar, may have some answers.
Sennels: Though I would prefer to use the term narcissistic rage (instead of psychotic rage) I completely agree with Jamie. The repression and conscious ignoring of female sexuality in the Muslim world has a very simple and profound reason: Muslim men find it hard to handle the fact that women’s sexuality is far superior to the men’s. Most women can make love for longer time than men and many women can continue the sexual act after having orgasm – some can even have more than one orgasm during sex.
The question is: Why are Muslim men so vulnerable? How did Muslim men end up on such a fragile pedestal? The answer is that Islam and Muslim culture depends on male aggression and needs to suppress female sensitivity. The reason for this is that this culture is aiming on conquering and domination. In such a culture, female softness and empathy would be distracting and a hurdle. In such a culture, men are simply worth more than women. This is the reason that Muslim boys are treated as kings from birth and therefore develop a fragile glass-like personality that is unable to handle defeat, inferiority and criticism.
I am sure that Dr. Kobrin and Dr. Gutmann are right about Israel: It is an unwelcome showcase in the Middle East that risks tempting the area’s Muslim women by promoting gender equality, human rights and freedom. This of course provokes the insecure Muslim men and contributes to their hate and wish for destruction of Israel and Western civilization in general. The hate of women is in this way is very closely connected with Islam’s wish for destruction of the free world.
Dr. Lachkar has a very interesting point: Muslim women – and their husbands – are in no doubt in a deep dilemma during the sexual act. On the one side the man wants the woman to display enjoyment to excite him and to confirm his abilities as a lover. On the other hand, she is expected not to enjoy it too much… How can love grow in such a garden? How can a culture bring happiness to people when it does not allow the women to be happy and does not allow the men to rejoice in women’s happiness? Islam does not care about such questions: As everybody who studies the Quran knows, love and happiness are not the goals of Islam.
Kobrin: Jamie, you make the observation of targeting the infidel. I would stress that within this mindset, the other is the female. It doesn’t matter if you are male and other, you are still the female and a threat. The thinking is very simplistic because of the splitting — male vs. other = i.e. female. The splitting compensates for the inability to integrate self as a whole person and separate from one’s mother psychologically. Everything gets split off and projected outwards but nothing is really resolved.
But why? Because the male identity is so confused due to not being permitted to separate from the female who has no power. The male baby is misused by the mother as her narcissistic source of power. This in turn strips the male baby of ever feeling safe to trust, because he is so bound up in his mother’s identity. The unhealthy dependency feeds into the erotics of Arab Muslim culture and other shame-honor cultures.
They are not only just confused, they do not have a sense of their own healthy empowerment. If they did, they would not attack and destroy the female. I ascribe to what Dr. Gutmann says about the suicide bomber when he writes:
“Does it represent the bursting forth of their deeply hidden and shame-generating female identifications? (perhaps the suicide bomber’s fascination with death-dealing explosions reflects the Muslim male’s fear of and fascination with explosive female sexuality?)”
I would add that this explosiveness is also entwined with the “explosiveness” and bloody nature of birth, hence life. Its opposite is death.
I won’t quibble so much with Dr. Sennels about narcissistic rage. To me there is always a hidden component of the psychotic because of this significant distortion about the female. A well encapsulated psychosis occurs in borderline and narcissistic pathology.
Dr. Lachkar raises the broader issue of human rights violations in the Middle East. This is key because the violations are tinged with the abuse of the female. We may surmise that this public behavior is extremely revealing because they have externalized rageful behavior against the other. We can hazard the guess that the public persona is emblematic of the private given the nature of cruelty. Most of life is psychosexual in nature though many would probably deny that because it arouses too much in them and that is scary as it makes them feel “out of control.”
The unspoken problem of not being able to pleasure women is really one of sadomasochism. Pain is confused with pleasure. What arouses one sexually is learned early in life so if as Dr. Sennels says that this is a culture hostile to pleasure, that means that it is going to be very difficult to undo the sadomasochism of arousal. I would even suggest that this sadomasochism which infuses Arab Muslim culture is very attractive to those on the left in the West as voyeurs. However, this is probably a subject for another symposium.
Lachkar: I remember attending a seminar about terrorism in the Middle East and during the question and answer period I mustered up the courage and blurted out a comment about how I felt the entire conflict to be linked to the role of women and their persecutors. The reaction was not only negative but they accused me of being rather “simplistic.” After reviewing the comments of my colleagues in this symposium, I might take this view a step further, and paraphrase the well known phrase: “Drive the Jews into the Sea” as a replacement to “Drive the Women into the Sea!” This is in accordance with Dr. Kobrin’s dramatic view of free Israeli neighboring women cavorting around in skimpy bikinis!
Dr. Gutmann also offers justification, first when he states, ”The Muslim fears that modernization leads inevitably to female liberation,” and second his reference to clitoridectomy, the process which surgically removes the orgasmic female organ of pleasure. Nonie Darwish, dramatically states how drastic and traumatic this is, and how the effort to reduce female orgasmic pleasure is in part to impose Sharia law throughout the world. Dr. Sennels also asks: why are men so vulnerable and agrees with Jamie that when it comes to sex, women are far more powerful and superior on several realms. This is a reality that the Muslim male cannot tolerate. Vulnerability has always meant something negative to the Muslim male, and he interprets it with weakness, impotence and smallness. Ironically, in clinical practice, to achieve vulnerability is the goal, especially with male abusers who think being a bully is a sign of strength and masculinity. So it makes sense for insecure men to destroy the power of the women and to diminish them into victims. In this way, fragile men think they are getting rid of the “weak” parts of themselves that they cannot tolerate. In psychoanalytic terms, this is referred to as projective identification.
Dr. Kobrin was on the verge of quibbling Dr. Sennels about narcissistic rage. Since she didn’t, I would like to take on that challenge. I do not see anything narcissistic with the collective psyche of the terrorist, In fact, I would go so far as to say they share a more collective borderline disorder — of even a psychotic one. Narcissists use women as self objects, women who empower their grandiose omnipotent self. A self object is respected. For example, Mrs. Milosevic was an empowering self mirroring object for her husband. She gave him the okay to murder and slaughter thousands of Albanians. The Muslim male cannot make use of a powerful women as a self object because his culture and his forefather have already diminished her existence. Second, narcissistic rage takes on an entirely different shape. The narcissist, when personally injured, will withdraw and go into isolation. The borderline, on the other hand, when injured, will spend the rest of his life retaliating, revenging and getting even. “We will not stop until we have destroyed every infidel through bombing, honor killings or whatever it takes.”
Will Smith in The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and The Clash of Arab Civilizations (2010) reinforces the two of the most perverse ways that the woman is viewed as powerful. First, her womb used as a weapon: “The womb of the Arab woman is her strongest weapon.” Secondly, the veil used as a protection or shield, not to guard against man’s lustful impulses, but rather to be used for her own protection. In other words, it is her choice to wear the veil as opposed to it being an object thrust upon her (Smith, 2010).
To conclude, I would like to end with a quote from Golda Meir, “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Again thank you Jamie and everyone on this panel for your insightful contributions, and even where we differ, I hope this psychodynamic view of the conflict will open a new vision and way of thinking.
Gutmann: This time around I’m getting compelling answers to the question I raised in my first post, namely: why the excessive fear of female sexuality among Arab men?
Dr. Sennels suggests the possibility of “Vagina Envy” among Arab men, who feel shamed by a female sexual response stronger than their own. Dr. Kobrin refers to what men fear as a toxic identification with the mother, while Dr. Lachkar explores the ways in which Arab men use women as dumping grounds for denied aspects of the self. These insights pretty much cover the waterfront. However, in addition to these possibilities, Arab male homosexuality [10] – hinted at by Drs Kobrin and Lachkar – should also be considered.
Phyllis Chesler recently reminded us [11] that homosexuality and pedophilia are deeply established Arab traits, and clinical experience teaches us that, when the homosexual drive comes under repression, it can lead to precisely the kinds of paranoid fears of the sexual woman that we have been considering. As we know, the repressed homosexual identifies with the female sexual role, and, like the woman, wants to be penetrated by men. This wish, in the mind of the repressed homosexual, is intolerable, and is projected on to the spouse or girl friend: it is she who desires sex with other men. This projection leads to an associated fear of the female sexual response: the stronger that drive, the more likely that the woman will seek multiple partners to satisfy it. As a consequence, the female sexual appetite must be surgically blunted, and the sexually mature, unappeasable woman must be kept in purdah (out of sight), away from temptation.
When these measures fail, there is always the venerable practice of Honor Killing to fall back on.
Strange that the world is wracked by terrorism, women are kept in bondage, and we face nuclear war because of the quirks in the Islamic unconscious that this panel has explored. Psychoanalysis has gone out of fashion, but its methods and insights are needed more than ever.
FP: Dr. Nancy Kobrin, Dr. Joanie Lachkar, Dr. David Gutmann and Dr. Nicolai Sennels, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.
By Jamie Glazov
www.frontpagemag.com
Editor’s note: To get the whole story behind why Islam demonizes and disallows female sexual pleasure, read Jamie Glazov’s most recent book, ” United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror [12].”
[1] “honor” killings: http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/764/worldwide-trends-in-honor-killings
[2] nicolaisennels@gmail.com.: mailto:nicolaisennels@gmail.com
[3] The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing.: http://www.amazon.com/Banality-Suicide-Terrorism-Psychology-Islamic/dp/1597975044
[4] our recent symposium: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/21/a-psychiatric-conference-on-truthful-girl-2/
[5] Religious Muslim boys are more violent: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100606-27673.html
[6] 70 percent: http://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/288719:Danmark%20%E2%80%93%20Indvandrerkvinder-fylder-krisecentre
[7] this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i9GmKz5FFk
[8] United in Hate: http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071076
[9] The Banality of Suicide: http://frontpagemag.com../2010/04/13/the-dr-ruth-of-counter-terrorism/
[10] Arab male homosexuality: http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=852
[11] Phyllis Chesler recently reminded us: http://frontpagemag.com../2010/07/19/in-defense-of-muslim-women/
[12] United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror: http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239336437&sr=1-1
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Copts abroad go after Elena Kagan
http://bikyamasr.com/wordpress/?p=15302
Aug 5th, 2010 | By Desmond Shephard | Category: Coptic Christianity, Featured, United States
WASHINGTON: Controversy over American President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is coming from the most unlikeliest of locations: Egyptian Coptic Christians abroad. They have launched a campaign against Kagan, arguing she supports Islamic law, or Sharia.
In a statement sent to supporters, the National American Coptic Assembly led by outspoken conservative Morris Sadek, called on its followers to send letters to Congress in order to block Kagan’s appointment.
It said that her “actions relative to sharia law” should not be given support and urged its constituents to “contact US Senators today and urge them to vote against her confirmation.”
Kagan, a 50-year-old New York native, has served as Obama’s top Supreme Court lawyer since last year. Stevens retired in June after more than 34 years on the court.
In the email action call, the Coptic Assembly cited an article written in Big Peace that alleges Kagan has an inkling toward conservative Islamic law.
“The reality is far more threatening and unprecedented in American history. A vote to confirm Elena Kagan’s nomination will bring a liberal, pro-Shariah justice to our highest Court,” reads part of the article. “And if she is confirmed, her behavior as Obama’s Solicitor General indicates she will refuse to recuse herself on any Shariah-related decision but instead will lead the charge to legitimate Shariah law in America.”
Sadek and his fellow assembly leaders are claiming that a vote for Kagan is a vote for Islamic conservatism, a tactic that may win over a handful of American Coptic Christians, but the likelihood of a widespread movement against Kagan is unlikely, says Munir Fahim, a Detroit-based Coptic scholar.
He said that “in order for Christians to see these lies as truth they have to already believe in the ignorant lies being perpetuated about Islam by the Tea Party movement and other right-wing fanatics in this country.
“It just does not seem likely that enough people fall into this category,” he added.
The email letter gives a list of Senators and how one can contact them in order to deliver the message that a vote for Kagan is a vote for Sharia.
Aug 5th, 2010 | By Desmond Shephard | Category: Coptic Christianity, Featured, United States
WASHINGTON: Controversy over American President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is coming from the most unlikeliest of locations: Egyptian Coptic Christians abroad. They have launched a campaign against Kagan, arguing she supports Islamic law, or Sharia.
In a statement sent to supporters, the National American Coptic Assembly led by outspoken conservative Morris Sadek, called on its followers to send letters to Congress in order to block Kagan’s appointment.
It said that her “actions relative to sharia law” should not be given support and urged its constituents to “contact US Senators today and urge them to vote against her confirmation.”
Kagan, a 50-year-old New York native, has served as Obama’s top Supreme Court lawyer since last year. Stevens retired in June after more than 34 years on the court.
In the email action call, the Coptic Assembly cited an article written in Big Peace that alleges Kagan has an inkling toward conservative Islamic law.
“The reality is far more threatening and unprecedented in American history. A vote to confirm Elena Kagan’s nomination will bring a liberal, pro-Shariah justice to our highest Court,” reads part of the article. “And if she is confirmed, her behavior as Obama’s Solicitor General indicates she will refuse to recuse herself on any Shariah-related decision but instead will lead the charge to legitimate Shariah law in America.”
Sadek and his fellow assembly leaders are claiming that a vote for Kagan is a vote for Islamic conservatism, a tactic that may win over a handful of American Coptic Christians, but the likelihood of a widespread movement against Kagan is unlikely, says Munir Fahim, a Detroit-based Coptic scholar.
He said that “in order for Christians to see these lies as truth they have to already believe in the ignorant lies being perpetuated about Islam by the Tea Party movement and other right-wing fanatics in this country.
“It just does not seem likely that enough people fall into this category,” he added.
The email letter gives a list of Senators and how one can contact them in order to deliver the message that a vote for Kagan is a vote for Sharia.
Friday, August 6, 2010
New al-Qaida leader knows US well
MIAMI – A suspected al-Qaida operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.
Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaida’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah (SHOOK’-ree joohm-HAH’) and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed — his former boss.
“He’s making operational decisions is the best way to put it,” said LeBlanc, the FBI’s lead Shukrijumah investigator. “He’s looking at attacking the U.S. and other Western countries. Basically through attrition, he has become his old boss.”
The FBI has been searching for Shukrijumah since 2003. He is thought to be the only al-Qaida leader to have once held permanent U.S. resident status, or a green card.
Shukrijumah was named earlier this year in a federal indictment as a conspirator in the case against three men accused of plotting suicide bomb attacks on New York’s subway system in 2009. The indictment marked the first criminal charges against Shukrijumah, who previously had been sought only as a witness.
Shukrijumah is also suspected of playing a role in plotting of potential al-Qaida bomb attacks in Norway and a never-executed attack on subways in the United Kingdom, but LeBlanc said no direct link has yet emerged. Travel records and other evidence also indicate Shukrijumah did research and surveillance in spring 2001 for a never-attempted plot to disrupt commerce in the Panama Canal by sinking a freighter there, LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah, who trained at al-Qaida’s Afghanistan camps in the late 1990s, was labeled a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. in 2004 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and the FBI also is releasing an age-enhanced photo of what he may look like today.
It’s natural he would focus on attacking on the U.S, LeBlanc said.
“He knows how the system works. He knows how to get a driver’s license. He knows how to get a passport,” LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah’s mother, Zurah Adbu Ahmed, said Thursday on the front stoop of her small home in suburban Miramar, Fla., that her son frequently talked about what he considered the excesses of American society — such as alcohol and drug abuse and women wearing skimpy clothes — but that he did not condone violence. She also said she has not had contact with her son for several years.
“This boy would never do evil stuff. He is not an evil person,” she said. “He loved this country. He never had a problem with the United States.”
LeBlanc said the new charges were brought after the New York subway bomb suspects identified him to investigators as their al-Qaida superior. The New York suspects provided other key information about his al-Qaida status.
“It was basically Adnan who convinced them to come back to the United States and do this attack,” LeBlanc said. “His ability to manipulate someone like that and direct that, I think it speaks volumes.”
Before turning to radical strains of Islam, Shukrijumah lived in Miramar with his mother and five siblings, excelling at computer science and chemistry courses while studying at community college. He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father, a Muslim cleric and missionary trained in Saudi Arabia, decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y.
At some point in the late 1990s, according to the FBI, Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in “jihad,” or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia.
That led to training camps in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic and advanced training in the use of automatic weapons, explosives, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage.
“What’s dangerous about an individual that understands the U.S. is he may have a better sense of our security vulnerabilities and insights into how to terrify the American people using smaller attacks for large, political impact,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation. “This increases the risk of attacks outside traditional places we normally worry about like New York and Washington.”
Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia. He is a citizen of Guyana, a small South American country where his father was born. His father died in 2004.
While still in Afghanistan, he met another young recruit — Jose Padilla, an American citizen once suspected of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” and now imprisoned on a 2007 terrorism material support conviction in Miami. At one point, according to interrogations of Padilla and other al-Qaida detainees, Shukrijumah and Padilla were paired in a plot to fill apartments in several high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up, but they had a falling out.
“They just couldn’t get along. It’s like two guys that could not work together,” LeBlanc said.
The FBI is still hoping to bring charges in South Florida against Shukrijumah, but key information about him was provided by Guantanamo Bay detainees such as Mohammed, whose use as a witness would be difficult.
“For us, it’s never been a dry hole. It’s always been an active investigation and it’s global in nature,” LeBlanc said. “We have never stopped working it.”
Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaida’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah (SHOOK’-ree joohm-HAH’) and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed — his former boss.
“He’s making operational decisions is the best way to put it,” said LeBlanc, the FBI’s lead Shukrijumah investigator. “He’s looking at attacking the U.S. and other Western countries. Basically through attrition, he has become his old boss.”
The FBI has been searching for Shukrijumah since 2003. He is thought to be the only al-Qaida leader to have once held permanent U.S. resident status, or a green card.
Shukrijumah was named earlier this year in a federal indictment as a conspirator in the case against three men accused of plotting suicide bomb attacks on New York’s subway system in 2009. The indictment marked the first criminal charges against Shukrijumah, who previously had been sought only as a witness.
Shukrijumah is also suspected of playing a role in plotting of potential al-Qaida bomb attacks in Norway and a never-executed attack on subways in the United Kingdom, but LeBlanc said no direct link has yet emerged. Travel records and other evidence also indicate Shukrijumah did research and surveillance in spring 2001 for a never-attempted plot to disrupt commerce in the Panama Canal by sinking a freighter there, LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah, who trained at al-Qaida’s Afghanistan camps in the late 1990s, was labeled a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. in 2004 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and the FBI also is releasing an age-enhanced photo of what he may look like today.
It’s natural he would focus on attacking on the U.S, LeBlanc said.
“He knows how the system works. He knows how to get a driver’s license. He knows how to get a passport,” LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah’s mother, Zurah Adbu Ahmed, said Thursday on the front stoop of her small home in suburban Miramar, Fla., that her son frequently talked about what he considered the excesses of American society — such as alcohol and drug abuse and women wearing skimpy clothes — but that he did not condone violence. She also said she has not had contact with her son for several years.
“This boy would never do evil stuff. He is not an evil person,” she said. “He loved this country. He never had a problem with the United States.”
LeBlanc said the new charges were brought after the New York subway bomb suspects identified him to investigators as their al-Qaida superior. The New York suspects provided other key information about his al-Qaida status.
“It was basically Adnan who convinced them to come back to the United States and do this attack,” LeBlanc said. “His ability to manipulate someone like that and direct that, I think it speaks volumes.”
Before turning to radical strains of Islam, Shukrijumah lived in Miramar with his mother and five siblings, excelling at computer science and chemistry courses while studying at community college. He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father, a Muslim cleric and missionary trained in Saudi Arabia, decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y.
At some point in the late 1990s, according to the FBI, Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in “jihad,” or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia.
That led to training camps in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic and advanced training in the use of automatic weapons, explosives, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage.
“What’s dangerous about an individual that understands the U.S. is he may have a better sense of our security vulnerabilities and insights into how to terrify the American people using smaller attacks for large, political impact,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation. “This increases the risk of attacks outside traditional places we normally worry about like New York and Washington.”
Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia. He is a citizen of Guyana, a small South American country where his father was born. His father died in 2004.
While still in Afghanistan, he met another young recruit — Jose Padilla, an American citizen once suspected of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” and now imprisoned on a 2007 terrorism material support conviction in Miami. At one point, according to interrogations of Padilla and other al-Qaida detainees, Shukrijumah and Padilla were paired in a plot to fill apartments in several high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up, but they had a falling out.
“They just couldn’t get along. It’s like two guys that could not work together,” LeBlanc said.
The FBI is still hoping to bring charges in South Florida against Shukrijumah, but key information about him was provided by Guantanamo Bay detainees such as Mohammed, whose use as a witness would be difficult.
“For us, it’s never been a dry hole. It’s always been an active investigation and it’s global in nature,” LeBlanc said. “We have never stopped working it.”
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Egypt’s Christians Under Heavy Assault
Muslim mobs murder, rape, and pillage, apparently with impunity. Thousands flee.
By Jamie Reno
Christians in Egypt are enduring one of the most brutal persecution campaigns in decades as Western nations look the other way, leading democracy activists say.
“The United States and other countries in the West have turned a blind eye to Egyptian’s oppression of the Christian Coptic community,” says Michael Meunier, president of the U.S. Copts Association, a nonprofit organization that focuses attention on the abuse that Egypt’s Christians face.
Copts trace their origins to St. Mark, who traveled to Alexandria, Egypt, after the biblical ascension of Christ. As that genealogy suggests, their presence predates the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the region — so suggestions that Muslims are acting out lingering hostility over the Crusades shouldn’t apply.
The persecution is nothing new in Egypt, but activists report that the violence is rising sharply. Muslim mob assaults are forcing thousands of Christian citizens to flee their homes. More than a dozen attacks on Copt communities and several killings were reported within the past year alone.
About 8 million Christians live in Egypt, according to the CIA World Factbook, but the Christian population used to be much larger. That may contribute to their being targeted for not only murder but also muggings and rapes. Frequently, their businesses are ransacked. These abuses apparently occur with impunity: Neither police nor government officials do much to discourage the pillaging, human rights activists say.
In fact, no Muslim has been convicted of any of these crimes against Christians, says Mounir Bishay, president of Christian Copts of California, a human rights organization dedicated to helping Egypt’s oppressed Coptic Christians.
Some members of Congress, including Reps. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., have tried to persuade the State Department to confront the Egyptian government about the maltreatment.
“I think it is about as bad as it can be” for Copts and other religious minorities in Egypt, Wolf recently wrote in a letter to Luis CdeBaca, President Obama’s ambassador in charge of combating the global trafficking of humans.
Activists are especially alarmed about the treatment of Coptic women, who reportedly are coerced into forced marriages that lead to rape and domestic servitude. But very little has been done, they say.
Bishay suggests that defending Copts simply doesn’t fit into the larger Obama agenda of building friendships in the Middle East.
“The problem is that President Obama is very sensitive not to offend the Islamic world,” Bishay says. “He wants to appease them for political reasons. Much of the Western world is ignoring this tragedy. But the violence is increasing. I’m convinced that, if more Americans knew what was really happening, they would get involved and help these innocent Christian people.”
Meunier mentions another factor: “The U.S. isn’t doing anything about this because Egypt holds too many cards in the Middle East.”
By Jamie Reno
Christians in Egypt are enduring one of the most brutal persecution campaigns in decades as Western nations look the other way, leading democracy activists say.
“The United States and other countries in the West have turned a blind eye to Egyptian’s oppression of the Christian Coptic community,” says Michael Meunier, president of the U.S. Copts Association, a nonprofit organization that focuses attention on the abuse that Egypt’s Christians face.
Copts trace their origins to St. Mark, who traveled to Alexandria, Egypt, after the biblical ascension of Christ. As that genealogy suggests, their presence predates the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the region — so suggestions that Muslims are acting out lingering hostility over the Crusades shouldn’t apply.
The persecution is nothing new in Egypt, but activists report that the violence is rising sharply. Muslim mob assaults are forcing thousands of Christian citizens to flee their homes. More than a dozen attacks on Copt communities and several killings were reported within the past year alone.
About 8 million Christians live in Egypt, according to the CIA World Factbook, but the Christian population used to be much larger. That may contribute to their being targeted for not only murder but also muggings and rapes. Frequently, their businesses are ransacked. These abuses apparently occur with impunity: Neither police nor government officials do much to discourage the pillaging, human rights activists say.
In fact, no Muslim has been convicted of any of these crimes against Christians, says Mounir Bishay, president of Christian Copts of California, a human rights organization dedicated to helping Egypt’s oppressed Coptic Christians.
Some members of Congress, including Reps. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., have tried to persuade the State Department to confront the Egyptian government about the maltreatment.
“I think it is about as bad as it can be” for Copts and other religious minorities in Egypt, Wolf recently wrote in a letter to Luis CdeBaca, President Obama’s ambassador in charge of combating the global trafficking of humans.
Activists are especially alarmed about the treatment of Coptic women, who reportedly are coerced into forced marriages that lead to rape and domestic servitude. But very little has been done, they say.
Bishay suggests that defending Copts simply doesn’t fit into the larger Obama agenda of building friendships in the Middle East.
“The problem is that President Obama is very sensitive not to offend the Islamic world,” Bishay says. “He wants to appease them for political reasons. Much of the Western world is ignoring this tragedy. But the violence is increasing. I’m convinced that, if more Americans knew what was really happening, they would get involved and help these innocent Christian people.”
Meunier mentions another factor: “The U.S. isn’t doing anything about this because Egypt holds too many cards in the Middle East.”
Ground-Zero Green Light for Islamic Supremacism
On Tuesday morning, the New York City Landmarks Commission, as expected [1], voted unanimously to deny landmark status to 45 Park Place [2], thus clearing the way for the demolition of the building currently there and the construction of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero.
The Commission swept aside calls to landmark the Burlington Coat Factory building for its historical significance: into it crashed the landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes. It ignored appeals to do this despite the fact that buildings of far lesser historical significance, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and the Stonewall Inn, have been designated as landmarks in New York. Never mind also that other buildings in the area that are architecturally similar have been landmarked. Who cares? Muslims need a triumphal mega-mosque at Ground Zero (and that is certainly how this mosque will be understood in the Islamic world, despite the deceptive moderate protestations of mosque organizers)! Make way!
Until the mosque is actually built, however, the game isn’t over — and with an increasing number of prominent politicians coming out against the mega-mosque, it can still be won in the court of public opinion.
What’s more, immediately after the Tuesday vote, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) characterized the Landmarks Commission decision as “deeply offensive to many of the victims and families of the 9-11 tragedy.” Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ explained: “The actions taken by the City of New York represent a blatant disregard for the city’s own procedures, while ignoring the fact that this is a historic and hallowed site that should not be destroyed to build an Islamic mosque. It has been clear from the beginning that the city has engaged in a rush to push this project through – ignoring proper procedure and ignoring a growing number of New Yorkers and Americans who don’t believe this site is the place to build a mosque.” As the ACLJ is representing a firefighter who survived 9/11 at the World Trade Center site, Sekulow announced: “We’re poised to file legal action on behalf of our client to challenge this flawed decision and put a stop to this project.”
The primary argument in favor of construction of the mosque, of course, is that it is a matter of religious freedom. We are endlessly told that if Muslims are denied permission to build this mega-mosque at Ground Zero, the door will be opened to the denial of the construction of synagogues and churches elsewhere. That argument advances in ignorance of the political and supremacist character of Islamic law, qualities that have no parallel in Jewish or Christian doctrine, but even aside from that, the question of this mosque is not actually a religious freedom issue.
Why not? Because opponents of the mosque, be they Pamela Geller’s group Stop Islamization Of America (SIOA), or Sarah Palin, or Rudy Giuliani, or Newt Gingrich, or anyone else, are not talking about banning mosques altogether. I do believe that mosques connected with the Saudis and/or the Muslim Brotherhood warrant careful scrutiny from law enforcement, but no one who is in the front line of the opposition to the mega-mosque at Ground Zero is calling for all mosques to be closed or for a ban on the construction of new mosques. And unless the property is marked as a war memorial, as it should be but will not be, no one is even calling for the expulsion of the Muslims who are currently praying in the existing former Burlington Coat Factory building at 45 Park Place; the Burlington Coat Factory is not a thirteen-story triumphal mega-mosque.
The question is, does the First Amendment really give every religious group the right to construct a house of worship wherever it wishes to do so? Is there never an occasion in which a location might be inappropriate? Many people have likened the construction of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero to the construction of a shrine to the kamikazes at Pearl Harbor or of a statue of Hitler outside the Auschwitz gates. Would the KKK be greenlighted to build a “reconciliation center” on the site of the 16th St. Baptist Church, as this parody [3] has it? (Others have rejected these comparisons based on the claim that the Cordoba Initiative leaders are “moderate” Muslims who hold to a radically different point of view from that of the Muslims who took down the Twin Towers on 9/11, but the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s record of deceit [4] and advocacy of Sharia should be enough to establish that that argument is fallacious. And of course they’ll be reading from the same Qur’an that inspired the 9/11 attacks; there is no “reformed” version.) The question is, if the shrine to the kamikazes were sponsored by a religious group, or Auschwitz were subject to First Amendment law, would there be no stopping the building of such things?
I expect there would be a way to stop such construction, and that many people who are saying today that this mosque is a religious freedom issue would be calling for the construction to be stopped. The U.S. Government outlawed Mormon polygamy in the nineteenth century; considerations of religious freedom were not considered absolute.
And today, government agencies do not hesitate to put roadblocks in the way of the construction of houses of worship [5] — at least non-Islamic ones. St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church [6] stood in the shadow of the World Trade Center and was crushed under the rubble when the towers collapsed on September 11, 2001. Almost nine years later it has still not been rebuilt; the rebuilding project is mired in bureaucracy, with New York City officials being uncooperative and throwing up roadblock after roadblock.
The contrast is telling with the mad rush on the part of New York City officials to build the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. A March 2009 New York Times story [7] on the church stated that “in recent negotiations,” New York’s Port Authority “cut the size of the church slightly and told church officials that its dome could not rise higher than the trade center memorial.”
But a thirteen-story mega-mosque? Fine!
Unable to rebuild their church, the St. Nicholas congregation has held St. Nicholas Day services in a tent at Ground Zero.
But a thirteen-story Islamic supremacist mega-mosque headed by a pro-Sharia, anti-free speech imam who refuses to denounce Hamas and has a history of duplicitous statements? Let’s clear aside every hurdle, tar opponents as bigots, and get that baby built!
In any case, it seems clear that no one assumes that any religious group has an absolute right to build a house of worship wherever it wants, except in this case. But once this mega-mosque is built, if it is, I expect that many who today are anxious to prove their multiculturalist, non-”bigoted” bona fides will rue the day.
By Robert Spencer
www.aina.org
[1] as expected: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/03/2010-08-03_unmask_the_mosque.html
[2] deny landmark status to 45 Park Place: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GROUND_ZERO_MOSQUE?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
[3] this parody: http://www.jstreetjive.com/2010/08/kkk-plans-to-build-center-on-ruins-of.html
[4] the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s record of deceit: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/-aziz-poonawalla-who-is.html
[5] government agencies do not hesitate to put roadblocks in the way of the construction of houses of worship: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/08/nine-years-later-church-at-ground-zero-still-not-rebuilt-but-mad-rush-to-build-islamic-supremacist-m.html
[6] St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church: http://www.stnicholasnyc.com/
[7] March 2009 New York Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19church.html
The Commission swept aside calls to landmark the Burlington Coat Factory building for its historical significance: into it crashed the landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes. It ignored appeals to do this despite the fact that buildings of far lesser historical significance, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and the Stonewall Inn, have been designated as landmarks in New York. Never mind also that other buildings in the area that are architecturally similar have been landmarked. Who cares? Muslims need a triumphal mega-mosque at Ground Zero (and that is certainly how this mosque will be understood in the Islamic world, despite the deceptive moderate protestations of mosque organizers)! Make way!
Until the mosque is actually built, however, the game isn’t over — and with an increasing number of prominent politicians coming out against the mega-mosque, it can still be won in the court of public opinion.
What’s more, immediately after the Tuesday vote, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) characterized the Landmarks Commission decision as “deeply offensive to many of the victims and families of the 9-11 tragedy.” Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ explained: “The actions taken by the City of New York represent a blatant disregard for the city’s own procedures, while ignoring the fact that this is a historic and hallowed site that should not be destroyed to build an Islamic mosque. It has been clear from the beginning that the city has engaged in a rush to push this project through – ignoring proper procedure and ignoring a growing number of New Yorkers and Americans who don’t believe this site is the place to build a mosque.” As the ACLJ is representing a firefighter who survived 9/11 at the World Trade Center site, Sekulow announced: “We’re poised to file legal action on behalf of our client to challenge this flawed decision and put a stop to this project.”
The primary argument in favor of construction of the mosque, of course, is that it is a matter of religious freedom. We are endlessly told that if Muslims are denied permission to build this mega-mosque at Ground Zero, the door will be opened to the denial of the construction of synagogues and churches elsewhere. That argument advances in ignorance of the political and supremacist character of Islamic law, qualities that have no parallel in Jewish or Christian doctrine, but even aside from that, the question of this mosque is not actually a religious freedom issue.
Why not? Because opponents of the mosque, be they Pamela Geller’s group Stop Islamization Of America (SIOA), or Sarah Palin, or Rudy Giuliani, or Newt Gingrich, or anyone else, are not talking about banning mosques altogether. I do believe that mosques connected with the Saudis and/or the Muslim Brotherhood warrant careful scrutiny from law enforcement, but no one who is in the front line of the opposition to the mega-mosque at Ground Zero is calling for all mosques to be closed or for a ban on the construction of new mosques. And unless the property is marked as a war memorial, as it should be but will not be, no one is even calling for the expulsion of the Muslims who are currently praying in the existing former Burlington Coat Factory building at 45 Park Place; the Burlington Coat Factory is not a thirteen-story triumphal mega-mosque.
The question is, does the First Amendment really give every religious group the right to construct a house of worship wherever it wishes to do so? Is there never an occasion in which a location might be inappropriate? Many people have likened the construction of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero to the construction of a shrine to the kamikazes at Pearl Harbor or of a statue of Hitler outside the Auschwitz gates. Would the KKK be greenlighted to build a “reconciliation center” on the site of the 16th St. Baptist Church, as this parody [3] has it? (Others have rejected these comparisons based on the claim that the Cordoba Initiative leaders are “moderate” Muslims who hold to a radically different point of view from that of the Muslims who took down the Twin Towers on 9/11, but the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s record of deceit [4] and advocacy of Sharia should be enough to establish that that argument is fallacious. And of course they’ll be reading from the same Qur’an that inspired the 9/11 attacks; there is no “reformed” version.) The question is, if the shrine to the kamikazes were sponsored by a religious group, or Auschwitz were subject to First Amendment law, would there be no stopping the building of such things?
I expect there would be a way to stop such construction, and that many people who are saying today that this mosque is a religious freedom issue would be calling for the construction to be stopped. The U.S. Government outlawed Mormon polygamy in the nineteenth century; considerations of religious freedom were not considered absolute.
And today, government agencies do not hesitate to put roadblocks in the way of the construction of houses of worship [5] — at least non-Islamic ones. St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church [6] stood in the shadow of the World Trade Center and was crushed under the rubble when the towers collapsed on September 11, 2001. Almost nine years later it has still not been rebuilt; the rebuilding project is mired in bureaucracy, with New York City officials being uncooperative and throwing up roadblock after roadblock.
The contrast is telling with the mad rush on the part of New York City officials to build the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. A March 2009 New York Times story [7] on the church stated that “in recent negotiations,” New York’s Port Authority “cut the size of the church slightly and told church officials that its dome could not rise higher than the trade center memorial.”
But a thirteen-story mega-mosque? Fine!
Unable to rebuild their church, the St. Nicholas congregation has held St. Nicholas Day services in a tent at Ground Zero.
But a thirteen-story Islamic supremacist mega-mosque headed by a pro-Sharia, anti-free speech imam who refuses to denounce Hamas and has a history of duplicitous statements? Let’s clear aside every hurdle, tar opponents as bigots, and get that baby built!
In any case, it seems clear that no one assumes that any religious group has an absolute right to build a house of worship wherever it wants, except in this case. But once this mega-mosque is built, if it is, I expect that many who today are anxious to prove their multiculturalist, non-”bigoted” bona fides will rue the day.
By Robert Spencer
www.aina.org
[1] as expected: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/03/2010-08-03_unmask_the_mosque.html
[2] deny landmark status to 45 Park Place: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GROUND_ZERO_MOSQUE?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
[3] this parody: http://www.jstreetjive.com/2010/08/kkk-plans-to-build-center-on-ruins-of.html
[4] the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s record of deceit: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/-aziz-poonawalla-who-is.html
[5] government agencies do not hesitate to put roadblocks in the way of the construction of houses of worship: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/08/nine-years-later-church-at-ground-zero-still-not-rebuilt-but-mad-rush-to-build-islamic-supremacist-m.html
[6] St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church: http://www.stnicholasnyc.com/
[7] March 2009 New York Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19church.html
In Saudi Arabia, a landmark welcome of a Christian scholar
Written by Caryle Murphy
The Christian Science Monitor
3 August 2010
Leonard Swidler, a professor of religion at
Temple University in Philadelphia
In a country that endorses Islam as the official religion, bans conversion to other religions, and punishes Christian proselytizing by death, Saudi Arabia's recent welcome of an American Christian scholar is a landmark.
Leonard Swidler, a professor of Roman Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Philadelphia's Temple University, is the first such scholar invited to exchange views with faculty at Al Imam Muhammed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh – the citadel of Saudi Arabia's ultraconservative brand of Islam.
Dr. Swidler's visit in late June underscores a shift toward greater openness in some official Saudi religious institutions, which previously had been leery of contact with outsiders of different faiths.
"Maybe it's not exciting for some people, but it's a very big change in Saudi Arabia," says Fahad al-Alhomoudi, a faculty member at Al Imam who helped arrange Swidler's visit.
Swidler called his meetings at Al Imam campus "kind of a breakthrough" during an interview here. "The opportunity to meet with 40 Saudi professors in the area of interreligious dialogue for me was quite extraordinary," he says. Ten of the 40 were women, who participated via videoconferencing.
"I would say that we are experiencing a tipping point right now in relations in the field of religion between the West ... and Islam," added Swidler, a world-recognized expert in interreligious dialogue. "I mean, you can't get more 'heartland' than Saudi Arabia, as far as Islam is concerned."
First dialogue with Christians and Jews
Swidler's visit came after 14 Al Imam faculty participated last fall in a week-long course at Temple's Dialogue Institute, founded by Swidler more than 30 years ago.
The Saudis in the program "were so excited because, for the first time in their lives, they had dialogue with Christians and Jews," says Mr. Alhomoudi, now a consultant to the rector of the all-female Princess Noura University in Riyadh. "They all said that this [experience] should be expanded."
Swidler's visit was intended to discuss areas of future collaboration between his Dialogue Institute and the university's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Center for Islamic Contemporary Studies and Dialogue of Civilizations.
"We need to understand each other," said Abdulmohsin Al Sumih, the center's dean. "That's why we are very keen to see Professor Swidler with us here in our university."
The center was established two years ago in response to a major push by the king to encourage Saudis to communicate with each other and with foreigners of all religious backgrounds. In 2007, the king became the first Saudi monarch to meet a Catholic pope, and the next year hosted an international conference on interreligious dialogue in Madrid, which was widely seen as an effort to repair Islam's damaged image after 9/11.
While many Saudis are embracing the new trend of dialogue, the kingdom's official religious establishment has been ambivalent about it. They'll need time, said Alhomoudi. "It's hard for them to swallow a big change."
The Christian Science Monitor
3 August 2010
Leonard Swidler, a professor of religion at
Temple University in Philadelphia
In a country that endorses Islam as the official religion, bans conversion to other religions, and punishes Christian proselytizing by death, Saudi Arabia's recent welcome of an American Christian scholar is a landmark.
Leonard Swidler, a professor of Roman Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Philadelphia's Temple University, is the first such scholar invited to exchange views with faculty at Al Imam Muhammed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh – the citadel of Saudi Arabia's ultraconservative brand of Islam.
Dr. Swidler's visit in late June underscores a shift toward greater openness in some official Saudi religious institutions, which previously had been leery of contact with outsiders of different faiths.
"Maybe it's not exciting for some people, but it's a very big change in Saudi Arabia," says Fahad al-Alhomoudi, a faculty member at Al Imam who helped arrange Swidler's visit.
Swidler called his meetings at Al Imam campus "kind of a breakthrough" during an interview here. "The opportunity to meet with 40 Saudi professors in the area of interreligious dialogue for me was quite extraordinary," he says. Ten of the 40 were women, who participated via videoconferencing.
"I would say that we are experiencing a tipping point right now in relations in the field of religion between the West ... and Islam," added Swidler, a world-recognized expert in interreligious dialogue. "I mean, you can't get more 'heartland' than Saudi Arabia, as far as Islam is concerned."
First dialogue with Christians and Jews
Swidler's visit came after 14 Al Imam faculty participated last fall in a week-long course at Temple's Dialogue Institute, founded by Swidler more than 30 years ago.
The Saudis in the program "were so excited because, for the first time in their lives, they had dialogue with Christians and Jews," says Mr. Alhomoudi, now a consultant to the rector of the all-female Princess Noura University in Riyadh. "They all said that this [experience] should be expanded."
Swidler's visit was intended to discuss areas of future collaboration between his Dialogue Institute and the university's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Center for Islamic Contemporary Studies and Dialogue of Civilizations.
"We need to understand each other," said Abdulmohsin Al Sumih, the center's dean. "That's why we are very keen to see Professor Swidler with us here in our university."
The center was established two years ago in response to a major push by the king to encourage Saudis to communicate with each other and with foreigners of all religious backgrounds. In 2007, the king became the first Saudi monarch to meet a Catholic pope, and the next year hosted an international conference on interreligious dialogue in Madrid, which was widely seen as an effort to repair Islam's damaged image after 9/11.
While many Saudis are embracing the new trend of dialogue, the kingdom's official religious establishment has been ambivalent about it. They'll need time, said Alhomoudi. "It's hard for them to swallow a big change."
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