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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

October 2014

What Makes a British Muslim An Executioner?

Are radicalized Muslim youth more dangerous to Europe than to the United States? It is far easier for immigrants to be absorbed in the US, a country created by immigration from its onset, than in Europe. But even in Europe, where immigrants benefit from generous welfare and possible absorption, many of their children are rejecting these values. Why?

The children of Muslim immigrants are becoming radicalized, some of them in groups and others as lone wolves. What they all have in common is that they detest and reject the very values that made the first generations prosper; they turn instead to literalist interpretations of Islam.

The Boston Marathon attack by a pair of Chechen brothers who had received nothing but kindness and advantages in their adopted country, demonstrated such rejection. One was in college and the other did well in his chosen sport, wrestling, and had a lovely wife willing to convert for him. Why did these two choose to indiscriminately murder fellow citizens during a marathon? And why should an Army psychiatrist, Hassan Nidal, the beneficiary of education and rank, turn on his country and fellow soldiers and commit mass murder?

A suggestion comes from an excellent historian of the world of Islam, Raymond Ibrahim, in the April 16 FrontPage Magazine, whose article says that the very elements that make up western society are transformed when put into the context of Islam. Human freedom, human dignity, and universal justice, when put in an Islamic framework, give us very different values: Muslim Freedom, Muslim dignity, and Muslim justice, none of them having any relationship to freedom, dignity, or justice. They only justify ?radicalization.?

We value rule of law, they want their law, Sharia. We value democracy, they value theocracy and Islamic dictatorship. We value dignity and pride for all, but they value only their kind of Muslim pride. We value gender equality; they find women abominable. Autonomy and personal freedom of choice are used by them as the right to ?choose? jihad and get away with it.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said that ?the threat of terrorism has changed?to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens---raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born.? Except in the case of the blue-collar-class Somalis in Minnesota who have been lured into suicidal adventures in Yemen, the majority of American wanabe jihadis have been educated and were economically successful. So were all the 9/11 terrorists. Poverty is not the issue.

Another explanation for the radicalization of the second generation is the structure of pious Muslim families: dictatorship from the top. Second-generation young men (and girls) are smothered by this, and very bored. A jihadi adventure is a way out. In Europe this is particularly so, and thousands have joined jihadis in Syria, and if they don?t die, they will return home trained for mayhem. We had better worry about this too. One British Muslim treated the world to a decapitation of three hostages. How does one learn that in England?

Fear of ?offending? Muslims muzzles the British press, an example of which was the Rotherham child abuse arrests (1,400 children trafficked), manned almost exclusively by British Pakistanis. The thugs running this horror were motivated initially by disdain for British teenage girls (whores anyway, they said). Now authorities must determine if this enterprise was also funding ISIL, already funded by other criminal activities. The intimidated press reluctantly identified these monsters as ?Asians,? fearful of saying Pakistani Muslims. But other ?Asians,? Indians and Bangladeshis, have protested this designation since they are not involved.

Our great illusion is that by exposing the Muslims to our freedoms, democracy, and economic benefits, they will gradually give up their hostility to the West. The fever roiling Islam today has not yet run its course. They are not underdogs whom we must not ?insult,? as the naive politically correct imagine. They are making a last ditch effort to resurrect a brutal, violent, medieval ideology.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

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