![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
♠
Does masturbation lead to suicide bombing? One would think not. There is no more direct link to suicide bombing than there is to blindness or schizophrenia. But there may be a connection between sexual inadequacy or frustration and the pull towards violent extremism....
Sexual deprivation may be a factor in the current wave of suicidal violence, unleashed by the Palestinian cause as well as revolutionary Islamism. The tantalising prospect of having one's pick of the loveliest virgins in paradise is deliberately dangled in front of young men trained for violent death. And even those who are not trained to kill and die often live in authoritarian societies in which sex before marriage is strictly forbidden, in which women outside the family home are not only supposed to be untouchable, but invisible. Access to MTV, the internet, DVDs and global advertising reinforces the notion that westerners live in a degenerate garden of sinful delights. This makes the lot of millions of young Arab men even harder to bear, and can provoke a mixture of rage and envy.
-- Ian Buruma for The Guardian
Could Monk become the next suicide bomber!?
This is obviously a provocative little article linking psychosexuality, culture, and the War on Terror, and it ranges far and wide to ancient Sparta, the Samurai, the Roman Empire, and the Nazis. The author includes the big disclaimers and qualifications, and one would not endorse this as the key scientific insight into jihadic terrorism, but in addition to being spicy reading, part of the appeal is that there may be a kernel of truth in these speculations. As Andrew Sullivan comments:
“I cannot believe that a culture in which half of humanity is essentially in slavery to the other half, and in which all sexuality is treated as potentially damning, is a culture at peace with itself or the world.”
( Buruma article )
xXx
Does masturbation lead to suicide bombing? One would think not. There is no more direct link to suicide bombing than there is to blindness or schizophrenia. But there may be a connection between sexual inadequacy or frustration and the pull towards violent extremism....
Sexual deprivation may be a factor in the current wave of suicidal violence, unleashed by the Palestinian cause as well as revolutionary Islamism. The tantalising prospect of having one's pick of the loveliest virgins in paradise is deliberately dangled in front of young men trained for violent death. And even those who are not trained to kill and die often live in authoritarian societies in which sex before marriage is strictly forbidden, in which women outside the family home are not only supposed to be untouchable, but invisible. Access to MTV, the internet, DVDs and global advertising reinforces the notion that westerners live in a degenerate garden of sinful delights. This makes the lot of millions of young Arab men even harder to bear, and can provoke a mixture of rage and envy.
-- Ian Buruma for The Guardian
Could Monk become the next suicide bomber!?
This is obviously a provocative little article linking psychosexuality, culture, and the War on Terror, and it ranges far and wide to ancient Sparta, the Samurai, the Roman Empire, and the Nazis. The author includes the big disclaimers and qualifications, and one would not endorse this as the key scientific insight into jihadic terrorism, but in addition to being spicy reading, part of the appeal is that there may be a kernel of truth in these speculations. As Andrew Sullivan comments:
“I cannot believe that a culture in which half of humanity is essentially in slavery to the other half, and in which all sexuality is treated as potentially damning, is a culture at peace with itself or the world.”
( Buruma article )
