Another non-Islamic theory of Islamic extremism: status competition

Philip M. writes from England:

You ever consider the possibility that Islamic extremism is caused by … status competition?!!

LA replies:

That’s really interesting. I think you may be onto something. However, according to the writer you’re satirizing, it’s liberal white guilt that is driven by status competition, while Islamic extremism is caused by cousin marriage. The fact that Muslims have a holy scripture, written by and co-eternal with their god, telling them with absolute authority to keep killing non-Muslims until Islam controls the whole earth, is of no interest to that writer, because only that which can be reduced to biological factors and competition for sex, survival, and the enhancement of one’s ego is of interest to him.

- end of initial entry -

Philip replies:

You wrote:

“That’s really interesting. I think you may be onto something..”

Thanks. I’d like to think at very least I’ll be in the running for the Melanie Philip’s “Most Ingenious Avoidance of Blaming Islam” award in 2009. There have been some strong contenders this year—Sheikh Ali Al-Aljihadi”s essay on how global warming is reducing Islamic living-space and enflaming their irritable ids, and Barack Obama’s theories concerning the potentially hallucinogenic properties of falafel and humus, both spring to mind. Perhaps next year the prestigious perspex pyramid will finally come back to England…see you there!

LA replies:

To be fair to Melanie Phillips, most of the time she doesn’t avoid blaming Islam.

As I’ve written before, there are two views of Islam that are in the mainstream, and another view of Islam that is just at the edge of the mainstream. The two mainstream views are:

1. The view of the left: Islam is wonderful, and if Muslims do anything bad from time to time, it because we drove them to it, or because of other factors that in any case are completely external to Islam itself.

2. The view of neocons and mainstream conservatives: Islam is wonderful, but there is this tiny segment of false Muslims, known as Islamists and Islamo-fascists, who have hijacked the wonderful religion to advance their wicked purposes which have nothing to do with Islam. We must fight these false Muslims by waging a “War on Terror” while continuing to welcome Muslims into the West and recruiting as our allies “moderate” Muslims, who are the indispensable key to defeating the “Islamofascists.”

The view of Islam that is at the edge of the mainstream is:

The Usual Suspects. These are the Islam critics who say truthfully that Islam itself (or, sometimes and alternatively, “radical Islam”) is the problem, that Islam is a mortal threat to our entire civilization, and that Islam must be stopped, must be stopped, must be stopped—but who refuse to suggest a single serious measure aimed at stopping it and instead act as though this mortal threat can be staved off by “rejecting political correctness” or “regaining Western confidence”—without, again, providing the slightest hint of what we shall DO about Islam AFTER we have freed ourselves from the shackles of political correctness and regained Western confidence. Phillips is not only a Usual Suspect, she is perhaps the best known and purest example of the type.

LA continues:

Here, in an entry a couple of years ago, I discuss a classic example of the idea that we can save ourselves from Islam merely by regaining Western confidence. According to this view, the confidence itself, the belief in our principles, will be enough, just as believing in democracy or believing in the universal desire for democracy is enough.

Sean R. writes:

I think you’re off-base about Steve Sailer’s take on cousin marriage in the Islamic world. He claims that, because children of families with consanguineous relationships are more closely related to each other than members of non-incestuous families, they have more reason to practice nepotism and to put the interests of their family ahead of society’s interests. This results in corruption and societies lacking in cohesion and civic virtue, which means neocon democratization projects are doomed to failure. He never said it leads to jihadi-style extremism. If anything, it would explain why the billion-strong Muslim world hasn’t been able to get its act together and cause a lot more trouble than it has (not that Sailer has made this argument, but I think he’d agree with it).

Here’s the most concise article he’s written about cousin marriage:

Sailer hasn’t written much about Islam in general. I don’t think he’s very interested in it. This rambling mess is the only thing I’m aware that he’s written about Islam itself:

He does at least mention the contents of the Holy Koran before going on to take a nominalist position that a scripture can be twisted to mean whatever you like.

Sailer is a reductionist who views everything through the lens of race and biology. I think he sees Muslims not so much as Muslims, but as a bunch of backwards non-whites, basically inbred Mexicans, with a religion as an ingroup marker.

LA replies:

Good points. By the way, I do not at all reject cousin marriage as factor in a corrupt/clannish society. I think that that analysis provides useful insights. But it seems to me that Sailer keeps returning to that one limited point over and over, as though it explains everything we need to know about Muslims—a category which, as you point out, doesn’t include jihad or Islam as a whole as far as Sailer is concerned.

So you’re right that he doesn’t use cousin marriage to explain Islamic extremism and jihad. However, while showing that I mistakenly suggested that he was doing that, you’ve made my underlying point better than I did:

“Sailer is a reductionist who views everything through the lens of race and biology. I think he sees Muslims not so much as Muslims, but as a bunch of backwards non-whites, basically inbred Mexicans, with a religion as an ingroup marker.”

December 1

RB writes:

Since Sailer only thinks in biological terms, perhaps the only way he can relate to the Islamic scriptural imperative is in terms of the effects of this ideology on the Muslim breeding system. Islam has the remarkable advantage of being highly patriarchal and polygamous with great sexual benefits for those warriors able to conquer in its name; Islam was and remains a great male racket. Furthermore, these advantages are not the temporary kind that have always been associated with warfare, but continue to exist within the peacetime new order. Wherever the warriors of Islam went they were able to commandeer large numbers of native women as wives and concubines. And unlike their counterparts in the West, they were able to do so with full religious and legal sanction. Their half-breed warrior sons, the mixed offspring of these matings, were acculturated into Islam as well as into the Arabic, and later the Turkish, language and in turn zealously spread their new religion and culture as they conquer still more territory; the process is repeated through several generations. In this way, a relatively small number of Arab and, at a later period, Berber and Turkish warriors, imprinted Islamic religion and culture on vast areas with large populations. Of course, such a permanent system also meant deterioration in the status of women; the latter lost even the limited rights they had managed to acquire under the preceding Greek and Roman civilization. This history also accounts for the continuing oppression of women extending even into modern times.

Other conquering cultures lacked the advantage of this system of sexual slavery in combination with the imperative of spreading their culture and religious ideology. The Macedonian Greeks like the Muslims had a desire to spread their way of life. However, Greek culture, lacking the institution of polygamous marriage and the extensive peacetime concubinage that characterized Islam, was unable to establish deep roots in the very lands that ultimately became Muslim. The Mongols, like the Muslims, also had widespread polygamy and sexual slavery. However, lacking a strong cultural imperative, the Mongols were ultimately absorbed by those they conquered.

LA replies:

Very interesting comment. This is yet a further demonstration of the M man’s genius—he was indeed the successful Hitler. As regrettable and horrible as it may be, Michael Hart was probably correct when he said in his book, The Hundred, that Muhammad was the single most influential man in history.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 30, 2008 10:49 PM | Send