Tariq Nelson
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05:40:21 pm on May 22, 2008 | # | |
As many of you may have read by now, yet another mentally ill convert set off a bomb in the UK. This is becoming a pattern that I have noticed for a few years now: “radicalized” converts to Islam often have some history of mental illness. Let’s review:
Adam Gadahn - the American lunatic that joined Al-Qaeda - and Richard Reid (the “shoe bomber”) were both alleged to have mental problems. Then there this story that largely went unnoticed in which a young man - who was said to possibly be a convert - accidentally blew himself up near a football stadium in Oklahoma. Whether or not he was Muslim is not known, but his roommates were said to be Muslim and they said that he was studying Islam. Whatever the case, he had been treated for clinical depression since the age of ten. Then last year a mentally ill convert was arrested in New York for allegedly plotting to kill the mayor. And this is an example of a mentally ill convert I met personally while I was living in Memphis.
Even those that are not converts are often mentally disturbed like this suspect as well as this one both from Australia and alleged to be suffering from mental illnesses
This is why I have said for some time now that anti-Western rants must be banned in the mosques in a near dictatorial manner as these mentally disturbed individuals can and will take things and run with it.
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aziz 6:24 pm on May 22, 2008 | #
I think this is the wrong approach. The right approach is to make sure that there does exist a safety net for mentally ill persons and devote resources to ensuring that they do receive te care they need. Censorship does not work and in unenforceable, and frankly it is the responsibility of each congregation to take heed of the fanatic element within.
razib 7:17 pm on May 22, 2008 | #
you’d probably see the same pattern among late 19th century anarchists. the mentally ill and anti-establishment extremists are drawn to ideologies which extend and enable their proclivities. today a large subset of islam fits the bill.
shahed 8:14 pm on May 22, 2008 | #
The gunman who shot up a Seattle Jewish community center was suffering from mental illness as well, and had been treated (unsuccessfully) for over a decade.
Willow 10:06 pm on May 22, 2008 | #
I disagree with Razib fairly frequently, but in this case: yes, yes, yes. To want to adopt a religion that will almost certainly alienate you from your birth community, you need to be one of two things: truly the product of an intense spiritual experience, or already alienated and looking for something to reinforce and enable that alienation. A large subset of converts to Islam are mentally ill. You’ve met ‘em, I’ve met ‘em. It’s why I avoided the convert expat crowd almost religiously (pun intended) for years while I was abroad.
Sheikhs and imams must be trained to recognize mental illness and direct those suffering from it to the appropriate medical personnel. Excessive zeal will not cure a man who is, in a biological, irrefutable, totally secular sense, as crazy as an outhouse rat.
razib 11:41 pm on May 22, 2008 | #
converts are overrepresented in marc sagemen’s sample of violent salafi radicals; i.e., converts which a large proportion of muslims who were violent salafi radicals than muslims as a whole.
razib 11:56 pm on May 22, 2008 | #
truly the product of an intense spiritual experience, or already alienated and looking for something to reinforce and enable that alienation.
marriage and friendship networks too (different causal factors are not exclusive). differs by community. e.g., when i was a kid i noticed that the black converts often came in clusters. e.g., one man converts and turns his life around, and another friend or two joins, and a small cluster of men who grow up together change religion over time as a whole. whites seemed more often to be singletons. many of the women were married to muslim immigrants, and often turned out to be sincere but rather nominal muslims (might stop eating pork and drinking, but they didn’t always show a really obsessive interest in their new religious orientation as the single white women converts generally did).
Tariq Nelson 6:02 am on May 23, 2008 | #
I agree with the part about the safety net, but as Razib said, they are drawn to anti-establishment rants - which were much more frequent before 9/11. The person giving the speech may not have a mental problem, but a person with such an issue may take it to the next level. Then everyone is scratching their heads wondering “what was wrong with him?”
There needs to be a safety net and a message of love, compassion and community involvement.
To clarify what I meant by “ban”, I did not mean a government ban. I meant that as a mosque policy anti-Western speeches/sermons should be banned and it should be an unwritten rule that anyone overheard speaking in favor of terrorism or terrorist organizations should be corrected immediately (”we absolutely do not support such nonsense and do not bring it here!”)
Tariq Nelson 6:13 am on May 23, 2008 | #
This is exactly my point
Willow 8:36 am on May 23, 2008 | #
Yes, and you made it very eloquently.
aziz 9:51 pm on May 23, 2008 | #
sorry Tariq, I guess as a liberal I am conditioned to think “government” first
Overall I think that most of the mosques in the US have such bans in an informal sense. I doubt very much that any of us attend one where such sentiments expressed from the minbar (so to speak) would be tolerated for long.
In a lot of ways I think that the Islamsphere also provides a corrective as well.