Boreal

Teach Your Children Well

What Were They Thinking?

Whoever said "Tradition is what you remember when you have forgotten everything else" probably was not praising those who, in old age, have become obsessed with traditions and rituals.

Obsession with traditions, selective memory loss and a willingness to abandon one's capacity to reason is rapidly becoming, in many Western countries, a young-peoples' psychosis.

More and more it's young people we see performing this or that religious ritual like mindless automatons. This is especially true of young Muslims whose core religious text, the Koran, is not meant to be reflected upon but memorized, the central vocation of the madrassa along with the teaching of Arabic. They will repeat these often violent hateful recollections at least five times a day as part of their prayers while prostrating themselves in the direction of Mecca.

For young people who have never experienced the old ways this obsession with traditions appears to come from contact with teachers, religious scholars and preachers versed in the old ways. This contact being facilitated, if not forced, by parents who want their children to adopt traditions and customs which they themselves questioned when they were young. The same parents who fled oppressive or dysfunctional regimes to live secure productive lives in the West.

They are the same parents who now insist that the religion that created most of the conditions that made their lives miserable in their native land be taught to their children, or at least accommodated in the public school system in their adopted countries.

What did these parents think would happen to their children when they demanded that they be taught, whether it be in madrassas or mosques or public school system (private system in Britain), religious instructions and traditions that: deny that humans have “human rights”, preach that females are inferior and only those who submit to the Will of Allah (Muslims) are deserving of compassion and mercy?

What did they think would happen to young people who were taught that any society that is not governed by the Koran and the sayings and the example of the self-proclaimed Prophet Muhammad must eventually submit to the Will of Allah or be destroyed?

What did they think would happen to young people who are compelled, day-in and day-out, to listen to clerics and teachers vilify Western Civilization and its accomplishments?

What happened, is their children developed an admiration and a willingness to co-operate with those who would destroy the civilization which welcomed and sheltered them, and replace it with a brutal, primitive, superstitious, myth-filled way of life reminiscent of the Dark Ages, the Age which gave birth to Islam.

In Britain, according to a poll for a Conservative think-tank, a growing number of young Muslims are embracing radical Islam, with more than a third wanting the Sharia to replace British law.

...

A poll of 1,003 Muslims by Populus found that more than a third of 16 to 24-year-olds wanted to live under Islamic law, while only 17 per cent of the over 55s questioned said they did.

Meanwhile, 31 per cent of young Muslims said they believed that if a Muslim converted to another religion they should be punished by death, compared with 19 per cent of the over 55s.

The deep divisions between the generations are most starkly illustrated over attitudes to the hijab, with 74 per cent of young people preferring Muslim women to wear them compared with 28 per cent of the over 55s.

The survey also found that 13 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds said that they admired organisations such as al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West, compared with 3 per cent of their parents’ generation.

Extreme youth: the Muslims who would swap British law for Sharia. The Times, January 29, 2007

An equally, if not more alarming radicalization of Muslim youth is happening in Canada.

In a poll conducted by Environics Research Group in conjunction with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 27 percent of Muslims asked about the planned slaughter of innocent men, women and children by 18 Muslim men and boys, answered that it was justified; 18 percent said they were sympathetic to those who wanted "to detonate truck bombs, to open fire in a crowded area ... to storm the Canadian Parliament and behead the Prime Minister and other leaders".

The Canadian media called the results of the poll positive; after all, only 27 percent of Muslims polled said they were "not very proud to be Canadians.” That leaves only 189,000 Canadian Muslims of whose loyalty you could not be absolutely sure if the battle between democracy and theocracy gets ugly, or uglier.