Islam, Tribalism and Progressives
I have always been viscerally repelled by the idea of a “collective”. The phrase “for the greater good” has the same affect on my nerves as fingernails clawing a chalkboard. Even when I hear groups of people reciting mantras or slogans in unison, I am reminded of brain dead zombies. During my reprobate days as a hippie I remained baffled what the hell the appeal of a commune was. Why the hell would I want strangers sharing the bounty of my work?. Especially when it is an inevitability that a good portion of that group are likey to be slackers who are more than willing to coast on other people’s efforts.
There is nothing that makes me more inclined to put someone’s lights out than their presumption that I owe them, or society, a damn thing. For those who revel in humanity , who get goose bumps at the thought of a group hug, fine and dandy. Find yourself a commune and get your collective rocks off. But don’t you dare impose that farcical construct on the rest of society. I worship free will. I embrace individualism with every fiber of my being. And any group, muslims or progressives, who dare suggest that they own a part of me, can kiss my singular ass.
So, you can imagine how cloying and perverse I find this Obama crowd and their “We Are One” mentality. More so, I find it alarming that this compulsion towards tribalism is a signature feature of muslim/arab society.
I ran into an article that I printed out a few years back on the “arab personality” that, at the time, provided me with much needed insight into the behavior of Islamists. It’s worth reading if you want to get a grasp of the muslims inverted sense of honor as well as their disconcerting similarities to the left. It appears that mohammad (spit) found in Arabs a society quite amenable to the claustrophobic conrtol that Islam exerts, just as the left finds comfort in such fatuous notions of “the greater good” or the idea of sacrificing “the one for the all.”
Here are a couple excerpts:
Arab society is tribal-nomadic, with its outstanding trait being clan loyalty and the anarchy of the desert. Most of its values were shaped in the jahiliyah age before Islam. The important values in Arab conceptions and behavior reflect the pre-Islamic ideals. In the jahiliyah age, “The Arabs did not know Allah and his Messenger and the rules of the religion.”
[...]
Despite their desert character, the city was the Arabs’ focus of change and political activity. Mecca was a center of trade and pilgrimage, since it was on the caravan routes. Religion had secondary importance in jahili society. Religious customs were observed out of tradition and feelings of respect for forefathers, but religion was fetishist, and values were fatalistic, out of absolute faith in the decrees of fate. Secular values took a central place, and were expressed in the concept of manliness (muruwwah), which meant the whole set of traits of a perfect Bedouin. The most important framework was preserving tribal solidarity (`asabiyyah). The tribe was the foundation for personal and group existence.
The critical phenomenon in its importance to Arab-Islamic society is honor. A man’s honor is sharaf. It is flexible, dynamic, and subject to change in accord with his deeds. A woman’s honor is `ird (also meaning her pelvis). In contrast to a man’s honor, this is firm and permanent. The woman grows up with her honor, and her most important role is to preserve it.
The moment that a woman’s honor is lost, it cannot be restored, and a man’s honor is severely wounded. Indeed, Muslim society is based on the virginity of its daughters. Honor is the most important supreme value in Arab life, more important than life itself. A man without honor is considered dead. Hence the saying, “It is better to die with honor than live with humiliation.” A man’s place in the tribe, as well as the tribe’s place among the tribes, was according to the measure of his and its honor. When honor was harmed, shame was caused which originated in public exposure, overt to everyone, a phenomenon which severely humiliated a man. Indeed, the Arab individual is caught up throughout his whole life in intensive activity to avoid shame and advance his honor. The central means for this was vengeance. Honor is restored only when vengeance has been carried out in public and is known to all.
[...]
Tribal tradition and clan loyalty had dominant influence in society. Likewise significant were blood ties within the extended family or the tribe, which determined group loyalties and identifications. Most of these social traits exist to this day, and influence the functioning of Arab society as a primordial system in which symbolic values are more important and esteemed than concrete values and the overall, holistic system of beliefs. This is “a shame society”, in which everyone must behave according to the accepted norms and internalize his own feelings in the system of group behavior.
Good lord if that isn’t a working definition of your typical garden variety amerikkan progressive. And shame is a tool that the left wields with great aplomb.. Again I am reminded why the left and Islam do so well in bed together. About the only difference is the left doesn’t embrace a moon god, unless of course you count Al Gore or Obama.
I once read that the series “Friends” faithfully portrays the new type of American family. Severed from meaningful family ties, young people find their identity in the group - be it the one who gathers at the neighborhood pub or those who seek their validity and connection in a tribe like those gathering around Obama. Or Hillary with her detestable “it takes a village”. None of which can provide society with the stability that the family unit can exert.
F. A. Hayek, whose classic work The Road to Serfdom (1944) was a shot across the bow of triumphal statism, connected socialism to primitive tribalism and a yearning for the solidarity and the morality of small groups, a yearning which, if extended much beyond the family, would prove incompatible with the requirements of the extended market order. The great novelist Robert Musil (1990 [1921]: 109), another Austrian critic of both nationalism and socialism, observed that socialism is “stuck in the ethics of fraternity.” The morality appropriate for family members is, however, quite different from that appropriate for governing the relations of the countless strangers one encounters in an extended order.(source)
The following paragraph could easily describe ReProgressives. Substitute Marxism, socialism or progressivism for the words Islam or Arab.
This reality expressed too the collective’s superiority over the individual. In contrast to modern societies which promote the individual’s interests, and in which the ethos is what the individual takes and receives from the generality, in Arab society, the ethos is what the individual does for the collective. There is a communal consensus in contrast to an individual’s opinion. Islam does not encourage individualism, rather favoring organized, orderly authority. The individual does not exist by his own right, and he and his opinions are unimportant, except through his belonging to a group framework. This is based on the hadith attributed to the Prophet: “The opinion of the many cannot be mistaken.” There is nothing more contemptible than individualism, which is viewed as factionalism and as harming the achievement of goals. This is also the basis for the attitude towards political opposition, which is not accepted in principle.
And there is nothing more contemptible to the healthy, freedom loving American than “collectivism”. But one can see why Leftists find little fault with Islam. And, despite their obsessive preoccupation with “white guilt”, you’ll find those sentences that are bolded below to be an apt description of Progressives as well.
Jews and Christians internalize the guilt. The Jews extend one cheek in the sense of, “We have sinned, we have transgressed, we have committed crimes,” while Christians extend the second cheek, in the sense of “mea culpa”. In contrast, the Arabs externalize guilt: “Do I have a problem? – You are guilty!” Among them, there is no attempt to compromise. They have no tolerance for the justice and rights of the other. From their vantage point, justice and rights are totally on their side, and nothing will divert them from their total, one-sided position. Among Arabs, you will not find the phenomenon so typical of Judeo-Christian culture: doubts, a sense of guilt, the self-tormenting approach, “Maybe we were not entirely OK,” or “Maybe we need to act or react differently.” These phenomena are totally unknown in Arab-Islamic society, towards outsiders.
They have no doubts about their positions or the justice of their side. They have no sense of guilt that they may have erred. They have neither twinges of conscience nor any regrets that they may have done wrong to anyone else. From their viewpoint, they have no problem concerning unbelievers, and no difficulty accusing or acting against those who do not live in dar al-harb. The phenomenon of the murderers by suicide, sometimes called suicide bombers, is an absolute indication. There is no condemnation, no regret, no problem of conscience among Arabs and Muslims, anywhere, in any social stratum, of any social position. For the most part, there is total support without reservations.
continue reading….The First Cultural Flaw in Thinking:The Arab Personality by David Bukay
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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Islamofascists, Muslims / Islam, Muslims Suck, War With Islam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
"Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom, and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate. It's the sand of the Coliseum. He'll bring them death... and they will love him for it."
zee May 19th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Thank you Aurora.
For the left, morality and law is situational. For muslims, their so-called morality bears absolutely no resemblance to Western mores. So, as you say, they can blithely say out of one side of their mouths that they are peaceful, while from the other they can calmly justify all of their barbarity.
In the end, it is best to fight totalitarianism, period. Islam is just another manifestation.