Blood sport

We've heard of graven-image taboos, but what's with there being no photographs out there of accused freelance Jihadi Steven Chand? He's the one whose lawyer told the media "there's an allegation that my client personally indicated that he wanted to behead the Prime Minister of Canada." Another instance of the MSM's squeamishness about offending members of the Jihadist community? No matter. Sunrise reflections in Goomp's window early May (above) suggest the fires of Hell, a suitable photographic stand-in.

"The media have perpetuated an erroneous idea that Islamic terrorists have corrupted the peaceful religion of Islam, when in fact it is moderate Muslims who have altered the religion and actually practice a Westernized, watered-down version of Islam," writes ritual-violence scholar and expert witness Dawn Perlmutter in "Mujahideen Blood Rituals: The Religious and Forensic Symbolism of Al Qaeda Beheading," expertly excerpted by truepeers of Flares into Darkness, who notes:

What may not be known to most Canadians is that beheading is a common form of ritual killing in the Islamic world -- for example, in state executions -- and it is one that appeals to many of today's youth, as the making and distribution on the internet and by al-Jazeera tv of execution videos by Jihadists demonsrates. For a committed Jihadist, beheading a western Prime Minister would perhaps be the symbolic equivalent of an ordinary Canadian youth's dream of winning the Stanley Cup by scoring the winning goal in triple overtime in game seven.

A few exerpts from truepeers's exerpts of Perlmutter's compelling thesis:

There would be no honor in simply cutting off someone’s head for the sake of terrorizing your enemies; the ritual characteristics have to be present to be theologically and communally sanctioned . . . These beheadings are nothing less than the sacred blood rituals of the Mujahideen . . .

The argument against the existence of ritual murder is based on a behavioral science theoretical perspective which claims that perpetrators of these crimes are suffering from some form of psychopathology. The argument that attempts to prove that ritual murder occurs is based on a religious cultural perspective that claims that the perpetrators are making rational choices to engage in a violent ritual that is religiously required of that group. I am the leading proponent of the latter argument, and throughout my career have witnessed a pervasive denial of the existence of premeditated group sanctioned ritual murder . . .  We do not want to acknowledge that in the civilized 21st century people are ritually murdered in the name of God or Satan.*

Perlmutter's argument is consistent with one of the ur-themes of this blog, the Darwinially driven dynamics of bonding within groups through honor codes among peers and the importance of being noticed. As we wrote about the London bombers last summer:

We agree they're ghouls, but they are not without a kind of perverted honor of the sort discussed by Dr. Peter F. Rowbotham in his 1992 essay "The Importance of Being Noticed," where he talks about the unorthodox bonding rituals of Hell's Angels and British Soccer fans as examples of a "system of honor that is an alternative to mainstream moral orders“ In some groups of young Muslims," say Dutch intelligence sources, "the wish to take part in jihad appears to be part of youth culture . . . It definitely can't be ruled out that some of these youths just want to make an impression on their peers with radical behavior and statements."

Echoes of blogger truepeers's suggestion (above) that "for a committed Jihadist, beheading a western Prime Minister would perhaps be the symbolic equivalent of an ordinary Canadia youth's dream of winning the Stanley Cup." And therein lies the crux. As Perlmutter concludes in "Mujahadeen Blood Rituals": 

Acknowledging the documented history of the Islamic religion should not be viewed as an insult to Modern Muslims or deemed slanderous of contemporary Islam. Every major religion has evolved and adapted to new technologies and cultural changes. The danger occurs when revisionist history promotes a fallacy that denies the violent origins of the Islamic faith and undermines the public’s perception of the seriousness of the threat.

The "broad strata" politicians and opinion shapers afraid of offending the delicate religious sensibilities of "terrorists, the ones who hate the West" need to listen up.

*Being a lumper, not a splitter [Not to mention being neither a behavioral scientist nor a ritual-violence scholar --ed] we would locate the sociopath and the ritual murderer at different points on the same spectrum. For both, those outside the peer group are mere props in their control fantasies, the difference being that whereas the Jihadist's peer group includes other persons, the sociopath lives in a peer group of one.

Comments

[goomp]

You have shown what the threat is. Now to get the mainly secular or faintly religious to understand and acknowledge that in the civilized 21st century people are ritually murdered in the name of God or Satan.*

[Tom Bowler]

How about the news that the world's most notorious ritual beheader has found paradise? I happened by a TV in time to hear a General Edwards, I think, on Fox say that information on Zarqawi's whereabouts came from some of his own people. It gives great credibility to Strategy Page who predicted yesterday that Zarwawi would suffer a mishap. According to them, al Qaeda considered Zarqawi a loose cannon and had just about enough of him.

[truepeers]

Thanks for keeping this in circulation. I think it's important that we try to understand (better to defeat) our enemy by finding the minimal core of common humanity that we share with him, and not simply write him off as the evil that he also is. Only then can we hope not only to defeat the Jihadists but figure out how to help Muslims constitute a new political order that will not threaten our freedoms.