Good ol' Uncle Johann:
The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence
Undermining an ideology is far harder than tracking down a network of criminals. It took seventy years and fifty million deaths until nobody would kill or die for Bolshevism. And many of the paths we take from here could make the problem even worse. We have all seen the Rumsfeld approach. Fill screens across the Muslim world with the orange jumpsuits of Guantanamo and the Muslims-on-a-leash of Abu Ghraib. Piss on the Koran. Show them who's boss. The Galloway approach is just as dangerous: give them what they want. Meet Osama's immediate demands and hope they'll leave us alone. Both encourage the totalitarian ideology to spread faster, one by beating it with a bloody stick and the other by offering it a carrot.
But it is possible now to see realistic ways to defuse the ticking-bomb of jihadism. One of the central tenets of this ideology is the inherent inferiority and weakness of women. Every jihadist I have ever met - from Gaza to Finsbury Park - has been a fierce ball of misogyny and sexual repression. If you haven't spoken to these people, it is hard to explain just how obsessed with sexual apartheid they are. At least two of the London bombers refused to make eye contact with women outside their families. Image the sheer effort and repression that required.
The best way to undermine the confidence and beliefs of jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women, their mothers and sisters and daughters. Where Muslim women are free to fight back against jihadists, they are already showing incredible tenacity and intellectual force. In Iraq, mass protests by women stopped the governing council from introducing sharia law in 2003. In Europe and America, from Irshad Manji to my colleague Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim women are offering the most effective critiques of Islamism.
The jihadists themselves know that Islamic feminism is the greatest threat to their future - that's why, in Iraq, the "resistance" has been systematically hunting down and killing the leaders of Muslim women's rights organisations. No ideology can survive on terrorising half the population indefinitely. When it comes, the Islamic Reformation will be drenched in oestrogen.
5 comments:
At least two of the London bombers refused to make eye contact with women outside their families
How come I haven't read this startling observation elsewhere, in amongst all the "they were just ordinary boys" guff?
Yesterday Johann told us (above) that some of the "ordinary lad" London bombers couldn't even look women in the eye. Today we learn of the Liverpool St bomber, Shehzad Tanweer:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/21/nimam221.xml
Bomber idolised bin Laden, says Pakistan family
By Peter Foster and Nasir Malick in Kottan
Telegraph
21/07/2005
Tanweer was keen to discuss religious issues and often railed against America and the West, Ahmed said. "He said bin Laden was his hero and everything he did was right," he said. "He believed that America had made Muslims suffer all over the world. "He also used to say about Kashmir that India was committing great atrocities against the Muslims. "When his father in England gave him money to buy clothes he would not spend it on himself, but for buying coats for those waging the jihad in Kashmir."
...
"I never felt that he was an extremist"
Worth looking at the letters page too:
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=642
Good article in the times today
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1071-1710602,00.html. Supports Johan's arguement and reveals the difference in feeling between female Muslims living in Britain and Male Muslims living in Britain.
"The proportion of Muslim men who say that they feel no loyalty to Britain (18 per cent) is more than three times higher than the proportion of women who say the same. In other words, nearly all Muslim women feel attached to this country and grateful for what it has given them, while a solid core of Muslim men do not. Muslim men are also far more likely than women to say that Western society is decadent and immoral.
This suggests that the problem with Britain — and the West as a whole — is not that it is un-Islamic. If that were the case, then Muslim women would surely feel as alienated as Muslim men. More plausible is that Muslim men resent the way in which their traditional feelings of superiority over women are challenged in the West. Here, they simply can’t get away with subjugating their womenfolk in the way that they can in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Somalia."
I seriously think that sexual repression is behind a lot of this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-20749-1710053,00.html
The benefit bombers who repaid help with hatred
Times
27/07/05
Sarah Scott, 23, who has known Ibrahim for 12 years, said that in November he handed her a copy of a pamphlet called Understanding Islam, written by an Islamic scholar. She said: “He asked me if I was Catholic because I have Irish family and I said I didn’t believe in anything. He said I should. He told me he was going to have all these virgins when he got to Heaven if he praises Allah. He said if you pray to Allah and if you have been loyal to Allah you would get 80 virgins, or something like that.
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