Muslim mobs: trying to make sense of it all.........

 

I have been reflecting on what causes mindless outbreaks of violence in Muslim ( not only Arab) countries, with the deaths of innocent people, mostly fellow Muslims, and the destruction of property. To we Westerners it strikes us as repellent, depraved, and barbaric. It exemplifies Muslim backwardness.

 

But it is more complex, and to get a handle on it we need to delve back into history to try to get an understanding of the Muslim psyche.

 

From about the 8th to the 16^th Centuries, Islam dominated the known world. It was the centre not just of military and political power but also of learning – in mathematics, navigation, astronomy, medicine and much else besides. It very nearly took over the whole of Christendom.

 

Then came the Crusades, the expulsion of the ’moors’ from almost the whole of Europe, a reversal of military and political power, and the Renaissance that shifted the epicentre of intellectualism and learning to the West.

 

The Islamic empire then turned inwards upon itself. The men with the beards took over from the men with the swords. The Koran and religiosity stifled intellectual life. Printing was banned. Science was seen as heresy. It continues to this day; more books are published in Greek than in Arabic -  not so much the Ottoman Empire as the Obscurantist Empire. Arabia was constantly humiliated by imperialism, whether political or economic.

 

The result has been an inferiority complex compounded by the extreme difficulty with which Islam accommodates modern life. Islam has never had a Reformation, so it is stuck in the 7^th Century. The religion requires that it is accepted unquestionably, and any deviation can have dire consequences, as we well know.

 

This leads to unreasoning outbursts of rage when the mob is sufficiently incited. Which brings me to a set of conclusions.

 

There is little doubt that there has been nothing spontaneous about the violence. It is an outcome of  deliberate scheming and incitement.

 

The wretched film has been in circulation for months. And yet it only attracted attention in the run-up to 9/1 (the perpetrators of which were Mossad, according to the Islamist line).  It has recently been dubbed into Arabic. There is evidence that it has been extensively tampered with. It has been shown repeatedly on two hard-line Islamist TV channels. The Cairo mob asserted that it had been shown  ‘US State TV’, which does not, of course, exist.  

 

Remember the Danish cartoons furore?

 

This was provoked by a collection of cartoons that had never been published. It cost 100 lives and widespread damage.

 

Cui bono?

 

Well, it is almost political cliché that in relatively unsophisticated societies a demagogue’s route to power should include control of the mob. Ayatollah Khomeini, for example, scored very nicely from his fatwa against Salman Rushdie. There is nothing spontaneous about any of these outbreaks of violence. They are deliberately planned and incited by grandstanding politicians.

 

Is this all a major threat to the West? Maybe.  It is certainly a self-destructive threat to Islam.