London, Violence and Islam

“With most religions the rule of thumb of ‘the more devout the more peaceable’ applies; in the case of Islam, the opposite is the rule of thumb.”

Our Canadian correspondent Rembrandt Clancy has translated an excellent analysis by Manfred Kleine-Hartlage of the Islamic worldview that instantiated itself last month in the summary execution of a British soldier on a London street.

The translator includes this introduction:

The following essay by the Social Scientist Manfred Kleine-Hartlage appeared at Politically Incorrect on 27 May 2013. The author’s work has appeared previously at Gates of Vienna, most recently (20 April 2013) in an article entitled “Why Conservatives Always Lose”.

Manfred Kleine-Hartlage wrote the current article in the aftermath of the slaughter of Drummer Lee Rigby, 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, in the streets of London-Woolwich on 22 May 2013 by two Muslims who acted in the name of Islam.

I would make two observations. First, in the article below, London, Violence and Islam, the author emphasises the use of induction in his thinking, where the focus is on the general level of the play of large numbers in working with the distinction between Islam and terrorism; or expressed slightly differently, between Islamic ideology and violent Muslims. It is against the background of inductive procedure that Manfred Kleine-Hartlage the highlights propagandistic function of the “ubiquitous warning” not to place Muslims under “general suspicion”, and of distracting attention from the broad political purpose behind large scale immigration.

Secondly, it is rare to find an attempt to define what is meant by the term “culture” (Kultur) despite the very high frequency of its use in the “multicultural” West. Manfred Kleine-Hartlage uses it only once, adjectivally, when he speaks of “cultural implicitness” [kultureller Selbstverständlichkeiten] in outlining what makes up “functioning societies”. He emphasises the largely unconscious background to cultures. Functioning societies, [cultures] are made up of “presuppositions” [Vorannahmen lit., pre-assumptions], which are therefore unconscious “rules”, and “dispositional patterns” [Einstellungsmuster, also attitude- patterns, -prototypes, or -models] which find their origins in religion and remain internalised [verinnerlicht] long after the conditions which gave rise to them have disappeared. Hence for the author, religion is a necessary component in the formation of a society or culture right from its point of origin. Thus the writer can speak, for example, of a “Christian ethos”.

The translated essay:

London, Violence and Islam

If, during an assassination, the murderer were to shout “Heil Hitler” and justify his crime with theses from Mein Kampf, no one would doubt that the murder had something to do with right-wing extremism. If, however, the murderer shouts — as happened recently in London-Woolwich — “Allahu Akhbar”, then an entire army of well-paid professional liars promptly marches up in order to make us believe that the attack naturally has nothing to do with Islam. It avails nothing and would frankly be an act of self-abasement to engage in discourse with such people. But it is well worthwhile to ask: what exactly, then, does this genre of terror have to do with Islam?

(by Manfred Kleine-Hartlage)

First it is important to blow away the fog of conceptual confusion with which the ruling cartel obfuscates the connection between Islam and terrorism:

This connection arises not only when every individual or even a majority of Muslims practice or even consciously supports violence against those with different beliefs. This is not the case. There are Muslims who think and behave in such a way in frighteningly large numbers to be sure, but seen as a whole they are obviously a minority.

The connection between Islam and violence consists much more in the fact that Islamic communities produce such minorities with high regularity; specifically:

  • whenever Muslim and non-Muslim ethnic groups are forced together in the same social space, especially in the same country,
  • the Muslim group is numerically large enough to impose a claim of supremacy,
  • and the social coexistence of the groups is not regulated by Sharia; that is, the Muslim claim of supremacy is not bindingly codified.

In such constellations the probability of omnifarious, violent attacks by Muslims against non-Muslims increases with the growth of the Muslim share of the population. Since this is well-known and even conspicuous, the favoured objection of do-gooders (Gutmenschen), that on the contrary most Muslims are not at all violent or religiously fanatical, is completely irrelevant. If it is well-known that the mass immigration of the followers of group X has the result Y, then the one who supports such immigration must explain why this consequence is desirable or at least why it is defensible to accept it. The ubiquitous warning against “general suspicion” under which one must not place Muslims — or whomever — (why so?), has a purely propagandistic function:

To be exact, its purpose is not to protect the individual Muslim from a “suspicion”, which he can very easily invalidate after all by his own behaviour without any effort, and which most of them actually invalidate de facto.

Its purpose is to protect the supporters of Muslim mass immigration from the question of why they are pursuing an immigration policy which in the long run exposes every single citizen to an exponentially increasing risk of falling victim to Muslim violent criminality right up to and including terrorism. A political-media class, which tries to prevent criticism of minorities, does not do so to protect these minorities but to protect themselves and their positions of power. The warning against “general suspicion” is part of a self-immunisation strategy of the Left and of the political establishment, who are pursuing a destructive policy contrary to the interests of their own citizens, not to suffer the embarrassment of having to justify the policy, hence they find it necessary to allege ethical defects and political extremism on the part of their critics and from such misrepresentation win the leverage to silence them — with all legal, and increasingly even illegal, means.

Then in the event of an act of butchery such as the one in London, which forces the establishment to name the causes, they regularly base their analysis of the problem on a species of mono-causality: all are at fault, not only Islam. Here again the reason is straightforward. With most other factors politicians can alter something, but they can scarcely force the Muslims to renounce their beliefs. If Islam is the cause then the unavoidable conclusion is to stop mass immigration of Muslims (in other words, the greater part of mass immigration generally). The political class would therefore have to relinquish one of their central goals; namely, the destruction of the ethnic homogeneity of the peoples of Europe. If they wish to avoid changing their policy — and they wish that at any price, particularly as they are not paying for it themselves — then, according to the motto “what is not allowed cannot happen”, they are unable to do otherwise than place Islam beyond criticism in the only way possible in a constitutional state.

But when a particular social constellation consistently produces the same — and for that reason predictable — results, then it is nothing other than an audacious, deceptive manoeuvre to deny the connection between Islam and violence, and to act as if the “root causes” of violence and terrorism are the fortuitous, secondary circumstances of each separate case, their shared characteristic being that they all have nothing to do with Islam.

But why does precisely this (above-mentioned) constellation produce precisely these results?

Every functioning society rests on an extremely complex system of norms and values, of rules and presuppositions [Vorannahmen lit., pre-assumptions], in which we are socialised from the inside [in das hinein wir sozialisiert werden], and the system is as marginal to our consciousness as [so wenig bewusst ist wie…] the grammatical rules of our mother tongue which we nonetheless use correctly.

It should be obvious that such dispositional patterns [Einstellungsmuster, also attitudinal forms or models], precisely because they are not the object of conscious negotiation processes, have a significantly longer life expectancy than individual norms for instance, and also outlast those factors to which they originally owe their emergence. What factors are these? From whence come the norm- and value-systems which give form [prägen] to societies so fundamentally, that their intrinsic logic, as a system of cultural implicitness [Selbstverständlichkeiten], is internalised? They come from religion.

(Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, Das Dschihadsystem. Wie der Islam funktioniert, p. 54 — The Jihad System: How Islam Functions)

This holds true also for western societies formed by the Christian ethos. It applies all the more to Islamic religion, since Islam is known to understand itself as a comprehensive way of life and not, for example, as a purely internal belief system. The Islamic world order is characterised by the following traits:

1.   The nature of man, which is created, willed and affirmed by Allah, consists in being a Muslim: one who submits to Allah. Who does not do that acts contrary to human nature. To not be a Muslim is therefore from the Islamic standpoint comparable to an especially disgusting sexual perversion.
2.   For that reason unbelievers are men of fewer rights and of low value, men who are therefore obliged to subject themselves to Muslims, and who may also to be compelled thereto.
3.   The unbelievers can only claim “rights” insofar as Muslims have conceded these to them in a contract of submission. Unbelievers per se — as rebels against Allah — are without rights.
4.   Peoples who decline the invitation to convert to Islam must be fought by the Islamic Umma and be subdued.
5.   Against peoples and states which penetrate Islamic territory, every single individual Muslim is obliged to wage jihad.
 

All these points, in particular the inferiority of non-Muslims, are not just theory. They have been practised for 1,400 years, and were the experienced reality in Islamic lands for many generations.

The systematic devaluation and deprivation of rights of the “unbelievers” functions effectively as a divine licence for giving the inner daemon free rein against them. Whatever a Muslim does to the “unbelievers” — even if it contravenes Islamic law — it can never be as reprehensible as the fact that the latter persevere absolutely in their “unbelief”; so that “they themselves are to blame” when they become victims of Islamic attacks. The contiguity [Verbindung] of immediate reward and good conscience in those who know that God is on their side, and who do not even have to fear death, worked and still does work as a well-nigh irresistible incentive to aggressive behaviour toward the “unbelievers”, and even a street mugging achieves by means thereof a sacral solemnity [sakrale Weihe]. (Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, Das Dschihadsystem. Wie der Islam funktioniert, P. 285 — The Jihad System: How Islam Functions)

Whether the religious motivation of the butchers of London is genuine or is only a pretextual rationalisation of anti-white racism is not the point: other religions attempt to rein in such base impulses. Islam, on the contrary, legitimises them and incites them, and hence — as has been shown — it is the only major religion for which there is a positive statistical correlation between religiosity and propensity to violence. With most religions the rule of thumb of “the more devout the more peaceable” applies; in the case of Islam, the opposite is the rule of thumb.

Islamic societies, including parallel societies in the West, are well-known as anything but liberal, laissez-faire societies where everyone does what he wants. They have at their disposal a powerful social-sanctioning mechanism which ensures that nobody steps out of line. If these sanctions do not regularly apply where it is a question of violence against non-Muslims, it is because the inferiority of the latter is part of the Islamic value system. Even when the violence theoretically meets with disapproval from the majority, and is only countenanced by the minority, it does not trigger anywhere near the degree of indignation in this majority that can be set off even by a Mohammad cartoon: the cartoon is aimed at Islam, the act of violence is aimed only against the unbelievers.

The butchery in London did not arise out of nothing, and it was an isolated event at best in the sense that every other single event is tautologically a single event. It did not happen coincidentally; it is the product of a system.

2 thoughts on “London, Violence and Islam

  1. The concept that the author Manfred Kleine-Hartlage is trying to articulate is one that has come up before in this forum (*) and is also one that others have been grappling with for several decades now.

    Within the History of Consciousness department at UC Santa Cruz, they would call it society’s collective consciousness. In the Artificial Intelligence community it would be refereed to as a system’s collective intelligence and within the robotics community it is sometimes referred to as ambient intelligence.

    All of these are just various ways to state in a more formal manner the common sense observation that when dealing with communities, societies, or cultures, “the whole will always be greater than the sum of the parts”.

    That is, groups can and will demonstrate modes of behavior that no one single individual member could or would be capable of expressing. That group behavior and individual behavior can be, and often are, two completely different things and neither one by itself is a reliable indicator for the other.

    (*)”What Makes Gates of Vienna Different” Wed., Nov. 11, 2009

  2. “Kultureller Selbstverständlichkeiten” might also be translated as “cultural givens” or “cultural norms.” A “kultureller Selbstverständlichkeit” is literally “(something) culturally self-evident.” I hope this will not be construed as quibbling, but as an attempt to polish a good translation.

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