A Look at the Muslims’ Mindset
By: Amil Imani
Diffusing the present dangerous confrontation between Islam and the West
demands rational impartial and cool heads to untangle facts from myth,
understand the Muslims’ mindset, and redress any grievances on either side.
The Muslims’ perennial complaint is that the imperialist West—all
colonial powers of the past, as well as the United States of America—have
victimized them for decades and even centuries and continue to do so in every
conceivable way. The litany of the alleged wrongdoings by the West is
encyclopedic. To begin with, the West has shown utter contempt for the
legitimate rights of the Muslim nation by arbitrarily dividing much of the
Islamic land into fractured entities,
plundering its resources, and topping these crimes by installing in its midst
its illegitimate stepchild of Israel—a huge thorn in their side, so they
complain.
“A grain of truth is needed to make a mountain of lies believable,” is
an old saw. In fairness to Muslims, there is some substance to their claims
against the West. For now, let us focus on the general mindset of Muslims which
bears heavily on the hostility toward the West—a serious hostility that may
bring about the dreaded Armageddon.
* Muslims are
patriarchal. The Muslim’s mind is imprinted with authoritarianism which starts
with the supreme authority, Allah, through his one and only prophet, Muhammad,
his Caliphs or Imams, and the high-ranking religious divines all the way down
to the village clergy. This authoritarian mentality encompasses all aspects of
life for the Muslim. The king and his dominion as the viceroy of God, the Khan
and his unchallenged rule over the tribe, the village headsman and his
extensive power, and finally the father and his iron grip at home over the
women and children. All these authority figures are male.
The authoritarian type poses numerous problems and presents many
ramifications—ramifications much too important and complex to be
comprehensively treated here. For now, it is important to understand that a
person with the authoritarian personality is an extremist. He can be docility
itself under certain circumstances and a maniacal murdering brute under others.
He is the type who would just as happily kill or die, when he is directed to do
so. He would, for instance, gladly strap on an explosive vest, in obedience to
a superior’s order, and detonate it in a crowd of innocent civilians without
the slightest hesitation.
Studies have shown that the authoritarian personality type can be found
among all peoples, including Americans. The important difference is in the
degree and prevalence of the condition. Islam breeds vast numbers of
extremists, while in
A dangerous feature of the authoritarian personality is the relative
lack of independent thinking. This deficiency makes the person highly amenable
to manipulation. Islam, by its rigidly authoritarian make up, robs a Muslim of
independent thinking to the extent that the believer blindly adopts it as his
infallible system of belief. Hence, the religion of Islam is guilty of
conditioning masses of people as easily manipulateable instruments in the hands
of authority figures.
*Muslims are
goal-directed. To Muslims, the goal is everything. As religious fascism, Islam
condones any and all means to achieve its goals.
The ultimate objective of Islam is the rule of the entire world under
the Islamic Ummeh—never mind that these life-in-hand soldiers of Allah disagree
with one another regarding the Ummeh itself and who is going to reign over it. That’s
a “family dispute” that they will resolve by their usual method of brute force.
Each sect believes that it has the Prophet and Allah on its side and it will
prevail over the other. For now they have to work diligently to achieve the
intermediate goal of defeating all non-believers.
There are countless instances that substantiate the Muslims’ “End
justifies the means” guiding principle. This policy dates back to Muhammad
himself.
Muhammad repeatedly made peace covenants with his adversaries, only to
violate them as soon as he was in an advantageous position to do so.
Betrayal, deception and outright lies are fully condoned in furthering
the work of Islam. In the present-day world, the work of Islam is defined by a
deeply-entrenched and influential clergy who issue fatwa—rulings—that become
directives and laws to the faithful.
Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Islamic state, for one, made
extensive use of the fatwa. Widely-known in the west is Khomeini’s fatwa
condemning Selman Rushdie to death for his book. A lesser known fatwa of
Khomeini during the last Iran-Iraq war led to the slaughter of thousands of
Iranian children. Children, nearly all under 15 years of age, were given
plastic keys to paradise as they were commanded by the fatwa of the imam to
rush forward to clear minefields for the tanks to follow. The Islamic
murderers, in obedience to the fatwa of a bloodthirsty man of Allah, had no
problem in deceiving the clueless lads with made in China plastic keys to
paradise.
Such is the existentialistic threat of Islam. It is a rigid stone-age
authoritarian system with a stranglehold over many of the nearly one and half
billion people under its command.
* Muslims are fatalists.
One of the greatest subtle, yet important differences between the Muslim’s
mindset and that of the people in the West is the extent to which Muslims are
fatalistic. There is hardly a statement that a Muslim makes without being
conditional—conditional on the will of Allah. “I shall see you tomorrow, Allah
willing,” “You will make it home, Allah willing,” “Things will work out, Allah
willing,” and on and on and on.
To the Muslim, Allah is on the job—on every job. Allah, with his
invisible mighty hand literally does and runs everything. “Allah’s hand is
above all other hands,” adorns every imaginable space in Islamic lands—a
telling point about the Muslim’s fatalism and submission to the omnipotent
omnipresent hand. If something happens, it is Allah’s will. If it doesn’t, it
is Allah’s will. The Muslim has little will of his own. It absolves him of any
and all responsibility. This mentality is in stark contrast with the “take
charge”
and “can do” mentality characteristic of Americans and others.
* Muslims are
psychologically different. People, as a group or as individuals, are different
and none is perfectly healthy psychologically. We all have a lose wheel or two
as we travel the bumpy road of life. Yet, most people manage to stay on course
most of the time, with perhaps a stop or two at a repair shop of a mental
health professional.
Most psychological disorders are exaggerations, deficits or surfeits of
the generally accepted norm—whatever the norm may be. When caution, for
instance, is practiced past suspicion, then we have paranoia; when reasonable
fear is exercised beyond any justification, then there is phobia.
The degree and severity of a condition determine the presence or absence
of psychopathology.
Muslims share a common Islamic psychological milieu, they are on the
Islamic “diet,” whether they live in Islamic lands or in societies
predominantly non-Islamic. The psychological condition of any Muslim group or
individual is directly dependent on the kind and amount of the Islamic diet
they consume. The Islamic diet has numerous ingredients—some of which are
wholesome, some are dangerously toxic, and some are between the two extremes.
Over the years, the Islamic leaders have found it expedient to feed the
masses mainly the toxic ingredients to further their own interests.
Individuals and groups, for instance, have used the immense energizing
power of hatred, the cohesive force of polarization in creating in-group solidarity;
and the great utility value of blaming others for their real and perceived
misfortunes. Jews have been their favorite and handy scapegoats from day one. To
this day, like the Nazis, they blame just about everything on the Jews.
Providing a comprehensive inventory of the psychological profile of the
Muslims is beyond the scope of this article. Yet, there is no question that the
psychological make up of a Muslim, depending on the extent of his dedication,
is different from that of non-Muslims. This difference, often irreconcilable as
things stand presently, is at the core of the clash of Islam with the West.
* Conclusion. Admittedly,
the non-Islamic culture is no panacea. It has, however, one outstanding feature
the Islamic culture lacks—it allows for liberty with all its attendants. For
those who have experienced liberty, no inducement is likely to make them give
it up—particularly not the fictional promises of the Islamists that have failed
in the past and are doomed to fail even more miserably in the future.
The best, yet difficult resolution of the conflict is to do what
hundreds of thousands of Muslims have already done. They have abandoned the
slaveholder Islam. They broke loose from the yoke of the exploitive clergy,
renounced Islamofacism, purged the discriminatory and bizarre teachings in the
Quran and the Hadith, and left the suffocating tent of dogmatic Islam for the
nurturing expanse of liberty.
Slavery of the mind is as evil as the slavery of the body. Islamofacism
enslaves them both.
Within the emancipating and accommodating haven of liberty, those who
wish to remain Muslim can retain and practice the good teachings of Islam but
renounce intolerance, hatred and violence. It takes great effort and courage to
ascend from the degrading pit of slavery to the mount of emancipation.
Yet, it is both possible and exhilarating to do it, since many have done
so successfully and happily. As more and more people leave the shackles of
religious slavery, more and more will follow and the long-suffering Muslims,
victimized by Islam itself for far too long, will be a free people in charge of
their own life and destiny. It is a painful process of growing up, of asserting
one’s coming of age, and marching lockstep with the free members of the human
race.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy
activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist,
literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking
out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at http://amilimani.com