 |
Lost
Lessons On Male Spiritedness
By Robert Sibley
The case of John Walker Lindh, the young Californian turned
Taliban recruit, has detonated like a psychological land mine
in the mental landscape of the United States and other Western
countries. And so it should. Besides Walker, 20, there have
been reports of other young "Westerners" among captured
Taliban troops. David Hicks, a 26-year-old Australian, was
captured in early December. Turns out he'd been fighting with
militant Islamic groups in places such as Serbia and Kashmir
since 1999. And then there is 28-year-old Richard Reid, the
alleged "shoe bomber" from Britain, who's accused
of trying to down an American Airlines flight by lighting
Semtex
explosive concealed in his sneakers.
|
|
The
idea that young men would effectively renounce their own civilization
to support terrorism should disturb all who value the West
and its humanist traditions. Why would young men granted the
privileges of secular society turn to an extremist version
of Islam utterly opposed to Western values?
Some commentators argue such conduct illustrates the lure
of militant Islam for the alienated young. Walker told one
of his Islamic teachers in Pakistan that "in the United
States, I feel alone; here I feel comfortable." Hicks
told a friend he "didn't like the way the way things
were going," so he turned to Islam. Reid was lured into
terrorism because he was poorly socialized, according to his
father. "Look at the terrible childhood he had and the
broken home he came from," said Robin Reid, a frequent
prison inmate when his son was a boy.
Others offer exculpatory psychobabble. Walker's turn to the
Taliban was a bad detour on a “journey of self-discovery,
“the consequences of being taught in” alternative
school in northern California's Marin County. As a San Francisco
Chronicle headline put it, the young man was "A Product
of Bay Area Culture." Stuff and nonsense! The psychobabblers
can't have it both ways: Reid turned to terrorism because
of an "unprogressive" childhood, while Walker joined
the Taliban because of a "progressive" upbringing.
Such shallow psychologizing doesn't come anywhere near explaining
why such different young men would reject their own societies.
In traditional societies, great emphasis was placed on appealing
to masculine pride and passion -- the desire for greatness,
for heroic endeavor, for testing the limits of one's existence,
physically and spiritually -- and the inculcation of the manly
virtues of honor and duty and loyalty. But for the past three
decades, the schools and public institutions of Western societies
have engaged in an experiment to re-engineer the world to
eliminate traditional notions of masculinity. The idea, it
seems, is that maleness |
|
leads
inexorably to violence and therefore "masculinity"
must be pacified. And so we have promoted sex- integrated
sports teams, forced the Boy Scouts to accept girls (at
least in Canada) and required little boys who sneak a recess
kiss to take remedial sensitivity classes. But in our rush
for the effeminized society we've forgotten that the source
of civilization is, paradoxically, also the source of barbarism.
The impulse that drives men to feel alienated from their
society and to act violently against it has the same source
as the impulse that makes them cherish women, support their
children and build cathedrals, mosques or other places of
worship.
To be sure, all three are grown men and accountable for
their behavior. Their upbringing does not mitigate or justify
their actions. Yet what drove them to act as they did --
what drives all of us -- was the desire for meaning and
purpose in their lives. We should be concerned that they
didn't find the satisfaction of their transcendent desires
within their own society.
That young Westerners would embrace the barbarism of fundamentalism,
serves as a warning about what happens when a society suppresses
or misdirects male spiritedness.
|
|
|
Sibley is
a member of the Ottawa (Ontario) Citizen's editorial board.
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
|
|
|
