An Unhinged Mind

Peoples' values and their priorities and their views on life are shaped by the societies in which they grow to maturity. But there are no guarantees that all members of any given society will submit to the general population's values, given the complexity of human nature. All the more so when there are complicating circumstances, when a society is no longer as homogeneous as it once was.

Homogeneity in any event is an oversubscribed concept, particularly in a society like that of the United States (and increasingly everywhere around the world as great masses of people migrate elsewhere than their countries of birth) with its pluralist society.

Enter an additional hugely conflicting circumstance; that of a religion traditionally foreign to the Western world, in and of itself no great barrier to social integration to a degree, but given decades-worth of antagonism and misunderstanding resulting in the radicalization of significant albeit relatively minor numbers of Muslims, a recipe for disastrous culture clashes.

When attacked, respond with a similar attack. The group that initiated the first attack can always anticipate that the counter-attack will be more determined than theirs.

But in the many instances of fanatical jihadist attacks on not only Western symbols, including the heartland of Western democracy in urban Europe and North America, along with moderate Muslim societies in the near and far east, the extent and viciousness of the attacks leave no room for complementary counter-attack and follow-up negotiations.

For there is no negotiating with groups dedicated to delivering death and eagerly anticipating their own in the process.

A deep viral contamination of fanaticism has overtaken the consciousness of a paranoid and aggrieved demographic of mostly young men in the world of Islam. Generations of colonial-status resentment followed by the reality of the West fattening itself on the exploitation of natural resources in developing, dependent countries has left the worm of resentment to ripen to a serpent of hatred.

Mired in a religion that marked an entire way of life from cradle to grave, circumscribed and adored by its followers, Muslim countries stagnated. Leaving development of their own resources to others, while resenting their reliance on the mechanics and science of other cultures.

Totalitarian and autocratic rulers relishing their growing status of wealth achievement made no effort to modernize their countries, to elevate the position of the masses beyond elemental existence. The disentitlement of the ordinary citizen deprived of human rights and hope for the future was prevalent. And their rulers side-tracked popular resentment outwardly, toward non-Muslims and Jews.

Anything that reflected Western customs, interests and traditions, was deemed corrupt and un-Islamic, and that included fashioning a civil society with all the guarantees of freedoms common to democracies and identified as repulsive to Islam. The search for knowledge in the sciences, in industry and mechanics; the necessity to industrialize and produce well-paid employment for the young also was un-Islamic.

In a search for personal attainment, freedoms and opportunities Muslims gravitated elsewhere.

But there is a deep cognitive dissonance between intermingling with Western values and permitting the diminishment of Muslim thought, values and practises. Deeply conflicting to the formidable affect of a closed culture, a disciplined religion, an un-irenic tradition. The impoverishment of freedom of thought and association resulting from Islamic traditions shunning other religions and other traditions, calling the faithful to demonstrate their resolute adherence to Islam encourages jihad.

Little wonder then, that the American-born Major Malik Nadal Hasan, a devout Muslim serving in the United States military was severely conflicted to learn he was to be dispatched to Afghanistan. When he had been attempting, without success, to encourage other enlisted men to resist serving in the counter-insurgency conflict in Afghanistan, in a desperate attempt to prove to himself his Islamic credentials, utterly polarized by his untenable position.

In the end, the psychiatrist who had been entrusted to help heal the traumatized minds of military men and women serving in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, could not heal himself. He surrendered to the escape of violent jihad, in the process slaughtering a jury's-worth of fellow Americans, and wounding three dozen in his attempted escape from his mental turmoil, his religion- and culture-inspired affliction.