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A Facebook friend posted a video of a young English man who had converted to radical Islam. The new English convert looked directly into the camera and insisted that he was ready to make war on his former friends, neighbors, and family, in order to make Islam dominant around the world.
There are many such videos. One is linked below.
My Facebook friends respond to such videos by lambasting Islam and Muslims. I think we could benefit by looking a bit closer to home.
Scholars of immigration talk about "push factors" and "pull factors." Something pushes the immigrant out of his homeland.
Similarly, something pushes those who convert to radical Islam. Something pushes them out of their natal cultures.
What are the push factors behind conversion to radical Islam? Why would a nice English kid feel so uncomfortable in his own culture that he must reject it and embrace the idea of jihad on his own loved ones?
I've been a teacher or a student all of my life.
I regularly see classes where, no matter the purported content of the class, the professor's obsession was teaching students to regard their natal culture with contempt. Some teachers stress the following:
* Western Civilization is nothing but evil, oppressive colonizers.
Professors who insist on this never teach their students that others besides Westerners colonized. For example, the Muslim Ottoman Empire was notoriously corrupt and oppressive. This is not mentioned by anti-Western professors. Too, Western colonizers sometimes did good things, like fighting against sati, the Hindu practice of burning widows alive, female infanticide, and Chinese foot binding. Not mentioned by anti-Western professors.
* There is nothing special about Western Civilization. Those Ancient Greeks? Nothing special. The only reason we focus on Western Civilization is our own ethnocentrism.
This was typified in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine.
The Smithsonian Institution is a publicly-funded institution charged with preserving American culture. It has been called "The Nation's Attic." Smithsonian Magazine is its publication. In its June, 2013 issue, in response to a reader who asked how the world would be different if Persians, not Greeks, had won the Greco-Persian Wars, Smithsonian employee and Iranian-American Massumeh Farhad claimed that "We might be looking back to ancient Persia as the birthplace of democracy."
This is a bizarre statement. In fact the ancient Persians rejected democracy, fearing it would produce mob rule. Persia was ruled by an absolute monarch. Persian servants to the Persian king had to cover their mouths in his presence so that he would not have to breathe the commoners' air. Farhad's statement is bizarre, and false, but it is Politically Correct. Ancient Greece? Nothing special. (I wrote to Farhad asking her to support her claim. I received no reply.)
* The Judeo-Christian tradition is nothing but misogyny, witch burning, inquisitions, and oppression.
* The best thing we can hope for is some cataclysm that will destroy Western Civilization so we can start from scratch and make a Brave, New World.
These messages are often conveyed in an atmosphere in which any criticism of any civilization other than Western Civilization is criminalized. Students are drilled in the facts of the Atlantic Slave Trade, for example. My students know nothing of the Muslim Slave Trade, which lasted longer, still exists, and enslaved many millions more than the Atlantic Slave Trade. My students have heard of witch burning, though they know more fiction than fact. They have never heard of Gulags or Kolyma or the Cultural Revolution. When I tell them that Marxism was the justification for the murder of tens of millions of people, they are astounded and confused. Many of my students have been taught, and believe, that Nazism was a Christian phenomenon. They know nothing of Nazism's atheist, Scientific Racism and neo-Pagan ideological roots.
I haven't just seen these kinds of classes in college. I've seen them in grade schools. I've seen ten and eleven year old kids stare at their teacher in incomprehension, having no idea what their teacher was attempted to indoctrinate them into.
And we see this anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian attitude in movies and on TV.
I have seen students' eyes go dull and their shoulders slump in despair. Students have said to me, in so many words, "I wish I was part of something I could feel proud of." Yes, I have heard students say, "I'm ashamed to be white … to be American … to be Christian."
Push factors. There are push factors in our culture that push young people into embracing extremism.
We need to stop pointing the finger outwards, "Oh, bad Muslims, Bad Islam," and start looking at ourselves, at our classrooms and movies and textbooks.
Filmmaker Robb Leech talks about why his stepbrother, Richard Dart, became an Islamist here.
There are many such videos. One is linked below.
My Facebook friends respond to such videos by lambasting Islam and Muslims. I think we could benefit by looking a bit closer to home.
Scholars of immigration talk about "push factors" and "pull factors." Something pushes the immigrant out of his homeland.
Similarly, something pushes those who convert to radical Islam. Something pushes them out of their natal cultures.
What are the push factors behind conversion to radical Islam? Why would a nice English kid feel so uncomfortable in his own culture that he must reject it and embrace the idea of jihad on his own loved ones?
I've been a teacher or a student all of my life.
I regularly see classes where, no matter the purported content of the class, the professor's obsession was teaching students to regard their natal culture with contempt. Some teachers stress the following:
* Western Civilization is nothing but evil, oppressive colonizers.
Professors who insist on this never teach their students that others besides Westerners colonized. For example, the Muslim Ottoman Empire was notoriously corrupt and oppressive. This is not mentioned by anti-Western professors. Too, Western colonizers sometimes did good things, like fighting against sati, the Hindu practice of burning widows alive, female infanticide, and Chinese foot binding. Not mentioned by anti-Western professors.
* There is nothing special about Western Civilization. Those Ancient Greeks? Nothing special. The only reason we focus on Western Civilization is our own ethnocentrism.
This was typified in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine.
The Smithsonian Institution is a publicly-funded institution charged with preserving American culture. It has been called "The Nation's Attic." Smithsonian Magazine is its publication. In its June, 2013 issue, in response to a reader who asked how the world would be different if Persians, not Greeks, had won the Greco-Persian Wars, Smithsonian employee and Iranian-American Massumeh Farhad claimed that "We might be looking back to ancient Persia as the birthplace of democracy."
This is a bizarre statement. In fact the ancient Persians rejected democracy, fearing it would produce mob rule. Persia was ruled by an absolute monarch. Persian servants to the Persian king had to cover their mouths in his presence so that he would not have to breathe the commoners' air. Farhad's statement is bizarre, and false, but it is Politically Correct. Ancient Greece? Nothing special. (I wrote to Farhad asking her to support her claim. I received no reply.)
* The Judeo-Christian tradition is nothing but misogyny, witch burning, inquisitions, and oppression.
* The best thing we can hope for is some cataclysm that will destroy Western Civilization so we can start from scratch and make a Brave, New World.
These messages are often conveyed in an atmosphere in which any criticism of any civilization other than Western Civilization is criminalized. Students are drilled in the facts of the Atlantic Slave Trade, for example. My students know nothing of the Muslim Slave Trade, which lasted longer, still exists, and enslaved many millions more than the Atlantic Slave Trade. My students have heard of witch burning, though they know more fiction than fact. They have never heard of Gulags or Kolyma or the Cultural Revolution. When I tell them that Marxism was the justification for the murder of tens of millions of people, they are astounded and confused. Many of my students have been taught, and believe, that Nazism was a Christian phenomenon. They know nothing of Nazism's atheist, Scientific Racism and neo-Pagan ideological roots.
I haven't just seen these kinds of classes in college. I've seen them in grade schools. I've seen ten and eleven year old kids stare at their teacher in incomprehension, having no idea what their teacher was attempted to indoctrinate them into.
And we see this anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian attitude in movies and on TV.
I have seen students' eyes go dull and their shoulders slump in despair. Students have said to me, in so many words, "I wish I was part of something I could feel proud of." Yes, I have heard students say, "I'm ashamed to be white … to be American … to be Christian."
Push factors. There are push factors in our culture that push young people into embracing extremism.
We need to stop pointing the finger outwards, "Oh, bad Muslims, Bad Islam," and start looking at ourselves, at our classrooms and movies and textbooks.
Filmmaker Robb Leech talks about why his stepbrother, Richard Dart, became an Islamist here.
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