Only a complete fool would say that the problems surrounding Islamic extremism applies to all Muslims. Yes, there are a large number, possibly a majority, of Muslims who support the sort of Shariah compliant behaviours that can reasonably be classified as extremist, but the propensity for this sort of behaviour or attitudes isn’t acquired in a congenital manner but learned from family members.
This is the opinion of an Australian reformist Muslim psychiatrist who has examined the sort of upbringing that both he and other Australian Muslims have had. Dr Tanveer Ahmed has said that there is a conflict between the sort of anti Western upbringing that some Australian Muslims have had and the wider society. Young Muslims Dr Ahmed said are taught to hate the West and blame the West for all of the problems suffered by the Islamic Ummah. This brings them into conflict with the rest of society, where people are brought up to be much more open minded and logical rather than steeped in religious dogma.
Normally, if we were dealing with more insular religious paths such as the Plymouth Brethren or Haredi Jews, any problems caused by an insular education would only really affect the individuals or the religious community themselves, not the rest of society. However, when we are dealing with Islam, a religion that many people know and accept is a path that encourages violence, then the insularity may become a far greater problem for society than merely having people erroneously taught that the world is only 6,000 years old as some Haredi Jews believe. Muslims educated in an insular manner who are taught that their central reference point for the world is Islam may, because of the strong undercurrent of incitement to violence in Islamic religious texts, be a much greater security problem both for the present and for the future.
Dr Ahmed added that some young Muslims are turning to a very extreme version of Islam in order to express their identity. In an article published by the UK Daily Mail Dr Ahmed also said that the sporting of beards and hijabs was a way of these Muslims giving the finger to Western society.
The Daily Mail said:
A Muslim-raised psychiatrist says hijabs and long beards are often an Islamic ‘middle finger’ to Western society.
Tanveer Ahmed, who has a practice in Sydney‘s west, says disaffected youths from Muslim migrant families are turning to an extremist version of Islam to find a sense of identity.
‘Where they tend to find a sense of identity is in Islam but a particular brand of it, one which they show through outer markers like hijabs or beards,’ he said in a Rebel Media video.
The Bangladeshi-born specialist, who moved to Australia when he was six, cited a term coined by Canadian author Tarek Fatah, who campaigns for a secular form of Islam which recognises gay rights.
‘Underneath that exterior though sometimes it can be a sense of opposition to mainstream society, what Canadian author Tarek Fatah calls a middle finger to the West,’ Dr Ahmed said.
The 42-year-old father of two daughters said that growing up in a culturally Muslim family, he had seen how children raised in that faith are often taught to be suspicious of Western society.
‘We are taught to blame the West for a lot of our problems,’ he said.
‘When we grow up we’re told to avoid mainstream society because it’s seen as morally corrupt.’
He added youths who turned to Islamist extremism or anti-Western views were also disconnected with their traditional cultural and continued to blame the West for problems in their ancestral nations ‘be it colonialism or foreign policy’.
‘This can breed a degree of resentment and identity disturbance for many Muslim kids,’ Dr Ahmed said.
Read the rest of this article on Dr Ahmed via this link:
I’ve seen and heard a fair bit of commentary by Dr Ahmed before and I believe he’s correct in his assessment of the situation. I’ve also heard elsewhere about Muslim parents drumming into their children the idea that the West is corrupt or to be despised or who have pushed various anti Western or anti-Semitic conspiracy theories onto them. Like Dr Ahmed I believe that a large part of the problem is the way that Muslim children are brought up to hate this that or the other. Young Muslims find themselves in a sort of limbo land where they are disconnected from their own national cultural background but are not sufficiently integrated into their host nations to be able to take part fully in the wider society. This sort of thing will only store up problems for the future.
The ultimate answer is for there to be a reform of Islam but a reform that recognises that the world in which the modern Muslim lives is a universe away from the world inhabited by the Islamic founder and the early Muslims. The insular way that some Muslims are brought up and the hostility that some Muslim families show towards the West has gone a long way towards creating the sort of Islam problems that we are seeing in Australia.
There should be more Muslims speaking up in the manner that Dr Ahmed has done, even though it may be painful and difficult for them to break out of the cultural straitjacket that they’ve been forced into. Dr Ahmed said: ‘It pains me to say it because I’m talking about my relatives and friends here.
‘Muslims wrap their identity so closely around Islam so it’s not easy for them to challenge the ideas within it.’
Surprisingly, at least to those of us who have become wearily used to Islamic spokespersons dishonestly whitewhashing Islam, Dr Ahmed recognises the scale of the problems that Australia faces from militant Islam. He said that there needs to be a drop in the number of uneducated refugees who cannot survive and thrive in advanced societies and that one solution to the problems that we are facing would be ‘to have less Islam in our societies’.
I take my hat off to Dr Ahmed I really do. He’s approaching this problem with far more honesty than some of our politicians are, whose woeful response to Islamic problems and Islamic atrocities has been to waffle on about how Islam is a ‘religion of peace’ whilst simultaneously trying to silence those who speak up about the depredations caused by the ideology of Islam.
