Savagery by Islamists is carried out in the same ritualistic manner as they prostrate multiple times toward Mecca in tribute to Allah and his emissary Muhammad. Yet, from time to time, and much more often these days, the devotees of Muhammad manage atrocities that are beyond the pale. The massacre, in cold blood, of three children and a rabbi in front of a school in Toulouse, France, represents the ultimate in a most dastardly act, even in the shameful annals of this cult of violence.
What makes any creature, much less a human, brim himself with enough hatred to walk to three young children and shoot them in the head? To complete the heinous act, he also shot the rabbi in the same manner, got back on his motorbike and sped away.
Acts of atrocities of this magnitude not only break our hearts, they make us wonder. What compels a seemingly ordinary person to even contemplate, much less carry out, such a slaughter? Is the individual insane, is he a sadist, or is he brainwashed? To all outward appearances, the vicious perpetrator appeared normal to people who knew him. His action was clearly planned. How did this creature ended up carrying out this heart wrenching murder?
An easy answer is that he was brainwashed by attending Islamist camps in Pakistan. But the notion of “brainwashing” that is bandied about is the stuff of science fiction and Hollywood movies such as the Manchurian Candidate.
A human being arrives in this world with his brains already washed in the sense of being what 17th Century English political philosopher John Locke called a ‘tabula rasa’, clean slate—ready for experiences to imprint its script. John Locke was only partly correct. The brain also arrives with numerous predispositions already in place (Nature and Genetics). It is a combination of life’s influences (a nurturing environment) and a person’s own decisions that determine which of these dispositions develop and which ones fail. It is through this process that a unique person is formed.
Many animals come with already in-place programs that automatically run much of their lives. Birds’ migration, mating courtship and thousands of other complex behaviors are instances of this type of specific programming. A catchword for this type of behavior is “instinct.” As a general rule, the higher up the organism is on the evolutionary scale, the less is its rigid pre-programs and the greater its latitude to exercise choices.
Making choices depends on what there is to choose from and to what extent a given choice appeals to the person. And the human newborn enters the arena of life without the means of being other than a passive recipient of “things” already chosen for him.
It is like the old joke by Henry Ford who reportedly told his customers that they could have the choice of color for their car as long as it is was black. Things are almost as bleak for the new arrival. He didn’t have a say in choosing his parents, his socio-economic condition, his environment of birth and much more. All are already in place and he must start life from the context of his birth.
The development of a newborn in any family is importantly influenced by many factors, among them how hands-on the parents are; how religious they are, how severely they micromanage him in an attempt to make him not only a good person but also a person better than they themselves are and have been.
Parents tend to live vicariously through their children by programming them, the best they can, so that the children become or achieve much of what they themselves had failed to become or to accomplish. This attitude covers all areas of life such as giving the child the education they didn’t have, helping him with fame and fortune, nurturing him to become a topnotch athlete and so forth.
It is a fact that early influences play a cardinal role in shaping the person. For this reason, for instance, the overwhelming majority of Muslims have born into Muslim families, Catholics into Catholic families, Hindus into Hindu families and so on. It is also a fact that the degree of religiosity ranges from mild to strong, with most people falling somewhere between the two extremes.
Interestingly, two siblings raised by the same set of parents under the same influences may end up at the opposite extremes in their religious views and practices. It is here that the human dynamic of freedom of choice comes into play and steers one to one extreme and the other to the other extreme. Occasional extreme deviations notwithstanding, the great majority of siblings of a given family end up with various degrees of that family’s overall religious and other values. The same general principle of subscribing to a set of common values exists in all human groupings, in some cases with a broad flexibility and inclusiveness while in others with rigidity and exclusivity.
In order to enjoy the privileges of belonging to a group, the person must also pay his membership dues.
The very young human faces, beginning with the minute he can make some sense of the world, a bewildering array of mysteries, challenges, and enticements. There are questions at every step, fears, and hopes entangled with the need to survive and possibly thrive.
Who am I? What is this world all about? What’s the purpose? What am I supposed to do and how? Where am I headed? People die. Where do they go? And on and on and on. The information booths available to him in the fairground of life provide him with answers that may help relieve his innate existential anxiety. And it is here that religion plays its critical role and holds a great appeal. Religion provides a surefire answer to those who are willing to take it on faith.
And Islam is a powerful magnet for the masses that are unable to deal with the uncertainties of life and death on their own. It is from this population, many already thoroughly indoctrinated from birth, which the majority of diehard jihadists emerge.
It is the bargain the jihadist makes. He surrenders totally to the religion of surrender in exchange for blanket security. Islam gives him all the answers he really seeks for dealing with this world and promises him a most lush and eternal paradise of Allah once he leaves it. And leaving this world in perfect submission as the foot soldier of the paradise’s creator gives the faithful unimaginably glorious sensual eternal reward in his next life. It’s a bargain that some buy in whole, some in part, some refuse and seek other means of dealing with their questions and the unrelenting existentialistic anxiety.
The great majority of jihadists emanate from the ranks of those born into the religion of Islam, simply because they are the ones who are most thoroughly indoctrinated and influenced by the Islamic dogma in their most receptive early years. Yet, there are others who embrace Islam in adulthood, on their own, and enlist themselves as devoted jihadists for the same rewards that Islam offers them.
Islam has a great advantage of the first call on the new arrival. It is an omnipresent system with masses of believers, mosques and madresehs, and a host of other social and economic organizations that overpower the person and steer him into the same fold; it is a sea of people who seem to know what they are all about, what life and death are all about, and what one must also do.
Within this sea of surging humanity composed of some 1.5 billion Muslims, each individual believer—a drop—through a combination of choice and forces beyond his control, ends up in one of its many waves. It is the jihadist wave that is highly attractive to the deeply indoctrinated and poorly adjusted in dealing rationally and independently with life. Here, he finds the ironclad perfect solution to his anxieties and perplexities.
To a jihadist, death is nothing more than casting off a shell of the worthless earthly existence and donning the suit for winging joyously to the life of bliss promised by none-other than Allah’s beloved final emissary, Muhammad.
Eradication of jihadism is a daunting task, since Islam is truly a virulent persistent pandemic disease. Massive education efforts, combined with resolute confrontation of all sources and people that support and promote this deadly philosophy, hold the best promise of dealing effectively with this affliction of humanity.
In addition to the family, places such as mosques and madresehs, Islamic associations and charitable organizations, prisons, and the like are incubators of jihadists. Massive efforts are required, on the one hand, to drain the breeding swamps of the Islamic virus, while on the other hand helping Muslims adopt an alternative perspective of life that addresses their perplexities and offers a degree of comfort that religions dispense without pitting one segment of humanity against another.
Sadly, the Jewish people have been used as the scapegoat for many centuries by a variety of non-Jews. Regrettably, Muslims for their part and have adopted scapegoating as an article of faith. The Muslims blame the Jews for all kinds of heinous things, dating back to the time of Muhammad himself. They say that the Jews of Medina betrayed the holy prophet by their treachery. They charged the poor exorbitant sums for their goods; did no productive work, yet made fortunes through money lending. To make matters worse, the Jews refused to embrace Muhammad’s religion, so they say. The story of Banu Qurayza’s Massacre from the Quranic verses, is very clear how Allah actually rejoices in this slaughter and enslavement of the tribe of Banu Qurayza’s Jews.
Quran-33:25- “Allah turned back the unbelievers [Meccans and their allies] in a state of rage, having not won any good, and Allah spared the believers battle. Allah is, indeed, Strong and Mighty.”
Hence, following the example of Muhammad, many Muslim societies have been blaming the Jews for everything and find them deserving of victimization. The litany of atrocities committed against the Jews by the followers of Muhammad is long indeed.
And when it comes to the Jews’ guilty verdict, there is no shortage of precedence. Jews have been around for a long time and have been a convenient target of scapegoating. People being people have a difficult time looking at themselves for their problems. It is by far easier to find others to blame than to try to mend one’s own ways. So the Jews became convenient scapegoats for bigots, the fascists, and all manners of malevolent louts.
The Bible says, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” The fruits of Islam are there for everyone to see for himself. Islam may have given the world some choice fruits. It has assuredly given the world many poisonous fruits as well.
“Children of Adam are akin to members of a body; if a member suffers, thus suffers the entire body,” a Persian poet (Sa’di) expressed it best, centuries ago.
Thus, I offer my condolences and share in the grief of the families who lost their dear ones in this dastardly and senseless act of murder. May this tragedy honor the memory of those innocent lost lives by strengthening the resolve of all of us to do all we can to prevent such bloodletting in the future.
The world is indeed a global village and we are its residents as well as its guardians. It is our sacred duty to live by the standards of civility, under the shelter of responsible liberty, with abiding respect for the sanctity of life. The Western ideal has always offered the best hope for all of mankind for a life of tolerance and harmony, in stark contrast to the Islamic dogma that has been the impetus for this horrific act of contemplated murder and numberless others since day one.
Expressions of grief are appropriate at this hour of sorrow. Yet, the civilized humanity must, and will, take the necessary and often painful measures to confront evil, be it secular or religious.
Amil Imani is the author of Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and Operation Persian Gulf and has his own blog here.