Most Jews teach their children knowledge, education, and the importance of being a contributing member to societies around them. Many Muslims teach their children to worship suffering.
Maral, I completely agree with you. And frankly, I think what you've described helps explain why progress in so much of the Islamic world has been so limited.
The frightening part is how incredibly difficult this is to change. It has to begin with education. It has to begin with the family and the values children are taught from their earliest years. You're talking about changing a mindset that has been reinforced generation after generation. That's a very long haul.
But there is another reality the West has to face right now. If Western civilization wants to survive, it has to finally understand that Islamist ideology is not the same as other cultures and ideologies that have integrated into the West. We keep pretending everyone ultimately shares our values and wants the same kind of society we want.
They don't.
Until the West is willing to accept that uncomfortable reality, we're going to continue slowly eroding our own civilization while congratulating ourselves on how tolerant we are.
I would add that Christianity for many centuries taught children similar notions. Suffering, martyrdom, and lack of personal agency: it was all in God's hands. The West that Christianity built changed quite suddenly with the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. It brought down Christianity and the Church as a dominating temporal power, but left people with 2,000 years of indoctrination to meekness, turning the other cheek, acceptance of dominance, toleration of the intolerant, forgiveness of the unforgivable, and eventually, total self human sacrifice for others. Everywhere, everybody, not just soldiers or medical professionals in dire life threatening areas .
Deeper still, the Christian West used Christianity to cover up for its blood soaked historic urges and colonisation ,common to all humankind. " Saving souls" went a long way in this spiritual deception. Christianity played it both meek and cruelly proud.
The result is Gad Saad's " suicidal empathy" in the West destroying it from within, allowing an invasion by Islam, precisely the disastrous totalitarian-ready savage mentality this article justifiably decries, but one which the dormant Western savage soul might understand as strength. Is there a mid -ground between Jesus - who preached meekness, but allegedly said he brought the sword and hostility- and Nietszche, for whom Nazi cruelty was an ideal?
It's hard for us to see and admit how one supremacist platform, Islam, succeeds in infiltrating the weak fabric of the West and use it to its controlling advantage, as there are common denominators ( like the cult of suffering and submission) , and the West, exhausted , guilt haunted and porous has lost its identity and one of society's strongest connecting bonds. Christianity had provided such identity and unity.
Yes I agree with this, firstly, I think they're bullying work very well this time. As well as their victimhood. You can't even mention their book in a bad light or you'll get fire bombed or something. Secondly they're online bullying that if you like Israel you must heat Muslims. And they're crying victim to everyone who'll listen like essay or Europe whatever and blaming Israel for every whitecrime under the sun
This is a critical article. It is foundational. Just think of revolutions throughout history. There are only two kinds (against a tyrannical leader or foreign colonial power) but the objective is the same...I want a better life for me and my children. Only the Islamic jihad trains their children to be martyrs.
Sorry for promoting it here, but my book ("Revolutions: In Their Own Words" www.amzn.to/3T17NyZ) has an entire heavily footnoted/sourced appendix just on this topic of Muslim children being taught to kill as if it is a normal human activity. The graduates of these programs where evident in the jubilation demonstrated by terrorists from Hamas, PIJ, and Fatah, along with the "innocent" Gazan civilians on October 7.
This is a major difference between civilizations (Western and Eastern) and Islam.
Thank you Maral Salmassi for writing about this. Thank you.
Golda Meir was dedicated to this issue for the other side and it got her nowhere. We are dealing with Tribal Societies who live in the dark ages. Mohammad Zahir Shah was the last king of Afghanistan, he was toppled in 1973. What the Taliban Tribes most strongly objected to was women being allowed at universities, studying next to men. For wanting to educate women King Mohammad Zahir Shah had to flee his country.
Thanks for excellent explanations, Maral. What’s frightening myself is the combination of current left ideology and Islam (I don’t call it islamism, I think it is an ideology rather than religion and no distinction appropriate). This “Islamogauchism” is now conquering media, justice system, public life in several countries, paired with Jew hatred. Hope following generations can resolve it.
Maral, I completely agree with you. And frankly, I think what you've described helps explain why progress in so much of the Islamic world has been so limited.
The frightening part is how incredibly difficult this is to change. It has to begin with education. It has to begin with the family and the values children are taught from their earliest years. You're talking about changing a mindset that has been reinforced generation after generation. That's a very long haul.
But there is another reality the West has to face right now. If Western civilization wants to survive, it has to finally understand that Islamist ideology is not the same as other cultures and ideologies that have integrated into the West. We keep pretending everyone ultimately shares our values and wants the same kind of society we want.
They don't.
Until the West is willing to accept that uncomfortable reality, we're going to continue slowly eroding our own civilization while congratulating ourselves on how tolerant we are.
Excellent article, Maral.
All in this article is true.
I would add that Christianity for many centuries taught children similar notions. Suffering, martyrdom, and lack of personal agency: it was all in God's hands. The West that Christianity built changed quite suddenly with the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. It brought down Christianity and the Church as a dominating temporal power, but left people with 2,000 years of indoctrination to meekness, turning the other cheek, acceptance of dominance, toleration of the intolerant, forgiveness of the unforgivable, and eventually, total self human sacrifice for others. Everywhere, everybody, not just soldiers or medical professionals in dire life threatening areas .
Deeper still, the Christian West used Christianity to cover up for its blood soaked historic urges and colonisation ,common to all humankind. " Saving souls" went a long way in this spiritual deception. Christianity played it both meek and cruelly proud.
The result is Gad Saad's " suicidal empathy" in the West destroying it from within, allowing an invasion by Islam, precisely the disastrous totalitarian-ready savage mentality this article justifiably decries, but one which the dormant Western savage soul might understand as strength. Is there a mid -ground between Jesus - who preached meekness, but allegedly said he brought the sword and hostility- and Nietszche, for whom Nazi cruelty was an ideal?
It's hard for us to see and admit how one supremacist platform, Islam, succeeds in infiltrating the weak fabric of the West and use it to its controlling advantage, as there are common denominators ( like the cult of suffering and submission) , and the West, exhausted , guilt haunted and porous has lost its identity and one of society's strongest connecting bonds. Christianity had provided such identity and unity.
What now, when it crumbles?
Yes I agree with this, firstly, I think they're bullying work very well this time. As well as their victimhood. You can't even mention their book in a bad light or you'll get fire bombed or something. Secondly they're online bullying that if you like Israel you must heat Muslims. And they're crying victim to everyone who'll listen like essay or Europe whatever and blaming Israel for every whitecrime under the sun
Pardon all my errors
This is a critical article. It is foundational. Just think of revolutions throughout history. There are only two kinds (against a tyrannical leader or foreign colonial power) but the objective is the same...I want a better life for me and my children. Only the Islamic jihad trains their children to be martyrs.
Sorry for promoting it here, but my book ("Revolutions: In Their Own Words" www.amzn.to/3T17NyZ) has an entire heavily footnoted/sourced appendix just on this topic of Muslim children being taught to kill as if it is a normal human activity. The graduates of these programs where evident in the jubilation demonstrated by terrorists from Hamas, PIJ, and Fatah, along with the "innocent" Gazan civilians on October 7.
This is a major difference between civilizations (Western and Eastern) and Islam.
Thank you Maral Salmassi for writing about this. Thank you.
Golda Meir was dedicated to this issue for the other side and it got her nowhere. We are dealing with Tribal Societies who live in the dark ages. Mohammad Zahir Shah was the last king of Afghanistan, he was toppled in 1973. What the Taliban Tribes most strongly objected to was women being allowed at universities, studying next to men. For wanting to educate women King Mohammad Zahir Shah had to flee his country.
Thanks for excellent explanations, Maral. What’s frightening myself is the combination of current left ideology and Islam (I don’t call it islamism, I think it is an ideology rather than religion and no distinction appropriate). This “Islamogauchism” is now conquering media, justice system, public life in several countries, paired with Jew hatred. Hope following generations can resolve it.