Jihadist Without A Cause
Will jihad become the next cool thing? Stewart Baker wonders whether the rash of home-grown terrorists has something to do with the attraction that adolescents and the disaffected feel toward groups their parents and teachers fear:
In the past fifty years, adolescents have joined a host of marginalized groups their parents found dangerous - juvenile delinquents, mods and rockers, punks, skinheads, and Goths. So why not jihadis? Islamist terror certainly scares authority figures; why wouldn't Western adolescents and misfits be attracted to violent Islamism -- at least as a symbolic stance?I'm sure that's not the only explanation for the appeal of homegrown Islamist extremism to a handful of youngsters in this country. Some of it has to do with ties to a home culture among second generation immigrants. But second-generation adolescents may also be tempted to affiliate with a strong, feared movement tied to their background.
Most of us think that Islamic terror is just too serious to be trivialized into a pose for disaffected Western youth. But we may have underrated the effects of a decade of political correctness and anti-Americanism in popular culture, where the search for transgressive shock value never ends.
Take M.I.A.'s new album. It lacks much of the raw energy and boogey rhythm that enlivened her first two albums, so transgression is pretty much all she has to fall back on. And transgress she does. One cut, "Illygirl," manages to rhyme (and identify the singer with) three cultural lodestars -- her "tight jeans," "Bruce Springsteen," and "muhahedin."
For M.I.A., in other words, Islamic terrorism is already a kind of life-style fashion item, a marginalized-and-proud, third-world stance that can be easily worn to parties in Brentwood by a wealthy former British art student. And if it works for M.I.A., why shouldn't it work for an immigrant kid in New Jersey?
Baker's book: Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren't Stopping Tomorrow's Terrorism.
I have to go to work. Later I'll post a great link to a Hitchens chat about this.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 25, 2010 7:21 AM
Two short minutes.
Of course, this error is presents in many perspectives... For example, there are a lot of people (ahem) who don't want to think of Christians as anything but the most cartoonish of Falwellian stereotypes....
Crid [cridcomment at gmail] at July 25, 2010 8:59 AM
It's an '80s word, but it's still useful: poseur. Yeah, I could see jihad chic becoming cool in certain youth sub-cultures, just as Nazism and devil worship were in my day. Yawn.
The privileged-class adults doing it is another matter. But if the idiots want to self-identify, I'm OK with that... that way, I know who they are.
Cousin Dave at July 25, 2010 9:10 AM
Che T shirts, anyone? It's only a few steps back from the SLA and the SDS to the KKK. I'll shed no tears if the state fries every one of these terrorist wannabe imbeciles. You might want to relive the past. I remember it. It's always the guys who are minding their own business and just doing their jobs who pay. Bank guards. Grad students. Policemen.
Fry Mumia. Bill Ayers too, while you're at it.
M.I.A. is too dumb to realize what her idols have in store for her - a burqua and a beating if she's lucky.
MarkD at July 25, 2010 10:47 AM
The fact is those islamic people don't know how to mind their own business and they are dangerous to any free nonislamic society or nonislamic goverment or nonislamic country that they infiltrated. Islamic cult, whether it is violent or "friendly", is a threat to our freethinking individual freedom.
I think those islamic people/groups are dangerous because they have a greater tendency to victimise and bully unwary freethinking people.
WLIL at July 25, 2010 5:45 PM
Yeah, this is weird. The last couple years, it seems the ladies have been in a scarf trend which is great because scarfs are cute. It's just odd to see a western gal trying to be hip or edgy or whatever by wearing a keffiyeh style scarf. Lame-o if you ask me. Same with the Castro military hats. Thumbs down.
Jason S. at July 25, 2010 8:12 PM
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