[lbo-talk] London Bombers motivations

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Aug 2 07:17:19 PDT 2005


James:
>
> Osman Hussain's lawyer Antonietta Sonnessa told BBC News what his motives
> were:
> "The justification for it was to do with Muslim women and the way that
> they've been treated."
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4737067.stm

I think this statement, ironically, is more revealing than all the blowback babble. It is not about world politics, it is about sex, or more precisely, about the need of these poor schmucks to prove their virility and respectability that invariably has two elements: respect by other males and control of "their" women. In that respect, most men are predictable like bowel movement.

Most men do not mind when their brethren are exploited or blown into pieces because they see it as "only natural" since they do not know life without exploitation and violence. The world politics and economy are incomprehensible abstractions of which if they have any understanding at all, that understanding is a simplistic projection of the personal relationships in their everyday life. This, btw, is why gossip tabloids, which skillfully reduce every aspect of the outside world, from presidential politics to culture, to personal scheming and liaisons, are so popular.

These men only rebel when their own position in the social hierarchy, and the self-image that comes with it, are being threatened. That position and self-image are almost invariably defined by how much respect is given to them by other males and by their access to and control of females. Therefore, any attempt (e.g. by Western legislators) to diminish the male control (by patriarchs, brothers or husbands) of women and female sexuality is viewed by these schmucks as a grave threat to the social order that guarantees their position and respectability - so they rebel violently against what they perceive as "decadence" "immorality" and "chaos." The very same mechanism is behind Wahabbism, the mujahadeen movement in Afghanistan, Islamic immigrant terrorism in Western Europe and the US, the fascist movement in Germany (Claudia Koontz, "Mothers in the Fatherland" gives an excellent account of sexual politics of Nazism), and the "right-to-life," neo-con, and fundie revival movements in the US.

Wojtek



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