Blaming masculinity – AGAIN
UK ‘criminologists’ argued at the British Society of Criminology’s international conference in Glasgow last week that the desire to conform to society’s idea of masculinity was a ‘driving’ force and motivator behind the 7/7/05 London terrorist attacks. Via the Sunday Herald:
THE driving force behind the devastating 7/7 suicide bomb attacks in London last year was not Islam but a desire by the terrorists to prove their masculinity, academics have claimed.
In a controversial paper presented to the British Society of Criminology’s international conference in Glasgow last week, UK researchers argued that a major factor that led four Muslims to bomb the capital was that they thought themselves to be deficient as men.
According to the academics, males aged between 18 and 24 are at the optimum age at which to carry out atrocities, as they are also at this time struggling to be identified as men.
They claim that in Britain’s consumerist society, in which masculine success is equated with material wealth, young Asians who are poor or disenfranchised or who feel oppressed will feel inadequate and will be vulnerable to manipulation by older men to commit horrific acts such as mass murder.
Dr Antony Whitehead, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Huddersfield, said: “The bombers have said that they are motivated by loyalty to Allah, which they may entirely believe. But if you are going to start to unpick their motivation, you need to consider their experience as young men as much as their adherence to Islam.
“It’s a very understandable dynamic. Young Muslim men in the British culture experience a lot of internalised pressure to conform to the idea of manhood – the ideal of courage and standing up for yourself.
“How does that affect you if you are a Pakistani male living in a council estate with a BNP councillor and a guy with no hair shoving shit through your letterbox? Social disadvantage equals disadvantage in being a man as well. We are coming at this from the wrong angle. We are making the assumption that it’s all about Islam.”
Right. We shouldn’t make the assumption that it’s "all about Islam" because we know that men from every other prominent religion out there routinely issue fatwas, as well as capture, torture, and behead innocent people. Oh, and they blow themselves up with the same frequency as Islamofascists. With that in mind, it makes you wonder what motivated this female suicide bomber? This one? How about this one? This woman? Or these? Or even these? Boggles the mind …
I think maybe these moron ‘criminologists’ should pay a visit to this site for a wake up call, since 7/7 didn’t disturb their long-term intellectual slumber.
Hat tip: LGF
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