Frontpage magazine had a symposium several days ago which explored the psychology behind an epidemic of rapes by Islamic youth in Europe. Symposium: To Rape an Unveiled Woman is long and often somewhat opaque in the participants reliance on technical language; however, some real nuggets shine through. Several participants made the point that the child rearing and family structure of the Islamic families in Europe (and throughout much of the Muslim world) tend to foster the development of emotionally stunted and immature boys/men. Much was made of the high incidence of spousal abuse, pedophilia, and perverse sexuality. Among the most chilling of the insights was the recognition that the families of the rapists did not see their sons as having done anything wrong and felt that the women universally deserved their punishment for behaving immodestly.
The Symposium participants tied rape of infidel women and unveiled Muslim women to some core tenets of Islam as well as psycho-cultural correlates of the Muslim culture. Dr. Sanity has an excellent summary and offers some clarifying comments:
I continue to think that the treatment of women under Islam is not only the key to understanding the pathology of the culture, but also the key to developing an antidote to its most poisonous and toxic elements. Unveiling the women of Islam and eliminating their second-class status; empowering them in the oppressive Islamic countries where their individuality and self-expression has been crushed-- may cause a ripple effect that could eventually alter a family structure that encourages the development of generation after generation of dysfunctional and pathological men and women.
Rape is typically a crime of rage at the rapist's perceived humiliation by the more powerful and alluring woman. A significant percent of rapists are unable to complete the sexual act which adds to their feelings of weakness and attendant rage. While the Symposium participants make the point that rape conflates rageful aggression and sexuality, I think they miss an aspect of current conditions that are serving to worsen the predicament for the Islamic culture, and by extension for those Western societies with which the Muslims come into contact.
The following section has to do with the psychodynamic development of boys and specific features of the Arab family and cultural practices that increase the male terror of the female body. It is not essential for the rest of my argument but offers some additional support for my thesis that Arab Muslim men have an inordinate fear of the female body and the terror/humiliation they experience with independent, "immodest" women fuels their rage which is so often expressed through rape.
[Part of the core of Male sexuality is the tension between the regressive pull to the powerful archaic mother, which includes powerful longings for blissful reunion and the terror of such regressive states. (Reunion fantasies are also fusion fantasies in which the ego is dissolved; this is both elating and terrifying; this is active in the psychology that has been demonstrated in the allure of suicide bombing.) This anxiety is then heightened by intensification of the normal castration anxiety boys must negotiate during the Oedipal phase of development (~4-6 years of age). While it is difficult to find a great deal of scholarly sociological evidence on-line, there are many anecdotal reports of the Arab Muslim practice of late circumcision; while Jewish boys are circumcised at 8 days of age, Arab boys typically are circumcised at a much later age, anywhere from 5-12. This serves to heighten already powerful castration anxiety, especially in homes where the father is exalted and the mother devalued.]
In addition, certain groups of Muslims raise children as if they are mere objects whose existence serves the needs defined by the parent and the state as opposed to allowing the child to understand and aspire to fulfill his own desires. The Palestinian Authority, explicitly since the voters freely elected Hamas to represent their interests, glorifies "martyrdom": (HT: Pamela)
Hamas Launches Web Site Encouraging Kids to Become ´Martyrs´
The Palestinian Authority's ruling Hamas terror group has launched a web site for children, preaching the moral desirability of being a suicide terrorist via cartoons and children's stories.
The Hamas-run Al-Fateh.net glorifies shahada, martyrdom, and presents the deaths of terrorists attacking Israelis as a time of celebration, according to a report by Palestinian Media Watch.
Here is then one more way in which men and boys are devalued; in this culture men can only hope to gain glory though annihilation. Women can, of course, always aspire to annihilation as well, but in addition, they, and they alone, can create new "martyrs."
Men have always recognized that only the woman has any true power to create in this world. The ability to create a new life is, to the very young child whose first question has always been, "where do I come from?" the greatest power in existence. In a dynamic, modern society, men can find outlets through which to sublimate their needs to create. This is one of the sources of many scientific discoveries, of great art works, even of blogs; the urge to create something lasting is a powerful motivator. And for the Arab world, this outlet does not exist. All the young Arab male can see is the creations of other, more powerful men; all he has is the ability to turn his ongoing and constant humiliation into rage and attach it to the temptress before whom he is weak and powerless in every sphere but one. Only by virtue of his greater physical strength can he hope to feel and act powerful. He cannot compete with other men in the intellectual sphere since an education grounded in the Koran, which proudly proclaims there is no further information necessary once the Koran has been ingested, is exquisitely ill designed for competing in the modern, connected world; he can not compete in the arena of physical strength, not even with the hated and devalued (though unconsciously exalted and envied) Jews who have created a modern dynamic society where there was none before.
It is no coincidence that those cultures which celebrate the death cult of radical Islam hate and fear freedom, especially for their women [HT: Dymphna]:
Iranian Women March for Freedom
Women's Day demonstration in Tehran brutally suppressedThousands of women gathered yesterday in Student Park in central Tehran to celebrate Women's Day. They carried placards with slogans calling for equality, peace, resistance, and freedom.
As was predicted, the police and a militia group called Hezbollah attacked and beat them, using electric batons.
Witnesses reported the arrest of many marchers; in fact, during the last six months the situation of women in Iran has gotten much worse. While Iran is the only country in the world where women outnumber men two to one in the universities, a plan is now afoot to limit job and study opportunities for women, which has aroused their ire.
Recent studies show many young women in Iran suffer depression and wish to go abroad to escape severe Islamic laws, such as obligatory hijab.
At the same time Iranian women in Europe are conducting a strenuous campaign against the difficult situation of their sisters in Iran to protest death by stoning, hijab, sexism, and Islamic laws that consign women to second-gender status.
Beyond all the psychoanalyzing of the Arab mind lies this: The Arab world offers no other way for the Arab male to feel powerful except through the degradation and submission of the female who he fears and desires yet can never approach. And this is the field in which the "honor" of the angry Muslim rapist is nurtured.
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