Psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners
 

This is a really interesting article I would encourage everyone to read before diving into this discussion. It is an interview with a psychologist at a Danish prison who dealt with the therapy and psychological needs of a large criminal Muslim immigrant population.

Among Criminal Muslims | FrontPage Magazine

It is too long to include in-line, but the basis of his findings were that people raised in a Muslim culture have different ideas about anger, self confidence, honor, individual responsibility, and because of these, it his his opinion that integration isn't just unlikely or impossible, it isn't even desirable to either party.

Be forewarned, some of the ideas he presents in this article are very "non-politically-correct" and potentially offensive, but I think it's important to read, regardless of how much weight you give his opinions.

He certainly presents a framework that supports a lot of the (to our Western minds) completely illogical/irrational actions Muslim society has taken, in terms of honor killings and the response to the Draw Muhammad day.

Does anyone who has interacted with Muslim societies have any supporting or contrasting reports/evidence/opinions to his?

The title pre-supposes that it is not possible to be Western AND Muslim, which I disagree with, having known for many years a few Westerners who are also Muslim.

There are a number of flaws in this research, and in the presentation of it, to me.

The data only relate to people already incarcerated, so there is great risk in looking at "Muslim culture" or "Western Culture" in this group of people. Also, the Muslims are not a slice through all muslims, or even through all criminal Muslims - it is a slice through Muslims who moved to Denmark and became criminals.

To draw any conclusion about cultural values that are uniquely Muslim, rather than related to immigration, or criminality you would need to study:

Muslim Immigrant Criminals
Muslim Immigrant Non-Criminals
Muslim Danish Criminals
Muslim Danish Non-Criminals
Non-Muslim Immigrant Criminals
Non-Muslim Danish Criminals
Non-Muslim Immigrant Non-Criminals

If some trait was associated with Islam, rather than Immigration or Criminality, then you could draw conclusions.

This is shoddy science.

its an interesting topic nontheless.

i was going to point out the same thing daniel did, exept i would have added danish converts to islam in the equation somewhere also to see if it is an islamic trait or a cultural one.

theres a lot about the study that id like to question, but i'm leaving this for tomorrow since its late here

id also like to add that this study is based on kids.. teenagers between the ages of 15-17. teenage delinquents who would not have developed the necesary skills to do what 'normal' kids do.

the more im reading the article, the more im seeing conclusions and assumptions made by the author which are factually incorrect.

Junk pseudo-science. Anyone who claims to try to compare "the west" with "the Muslims" based on a number of interviews at a specific location under specific conditions is full of shit.

As is anyone who starts from the premise of "why can't Muslims integrate in our western society."

The first question that one would have to ask is if what makes those he talked to behave that way was the fact that they were Muslim, or something else.

Finally, there is also the question of what is "Western."

Also, trying to add something to the great opening exposition entered by Daniel_, which seems all but impossible to do now, but there is something already entirely false in the title of the doctor's researchings (which as it seems to be, is not actually his take from it, but something that the OP himself added, well, I don't know why..). I would give the advice that you allow the title of the entire thread to be "Among Criminal Muslims"... otherwise you might just get a number of other members coming into a discussion thinking this was the entire premise to your article / argument.

It pre-supposes a number of things, the most broad of which being that Western culture and Muslim culture can so easily be divvied up into two neat portions of world understanding. Despite such nations as Australia and Japan being viewed globally as markedly 'Western' in categories such as technology, government infrastructure, GDP per capita, and cultural adoptions, there are a number of other countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe where Muslims make up a good, if not a majority of the population.

It's also weird to notice that throughout the interview with the author, Sennels, he makes broad claims and assumptions to this 'Western World' of his, as though it is only made of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Yeah, the Western World isn't just white people.

For a self-proclaimed humanist, Sennels seems to me to find it too easy to draw lines. Gauging reactions as research for his next degree, perhaps? Educated people who stir the pot with divisive nonsense are misusing their brains.

Also: Surrender? Seriously?

you dont think the interviewer is feeding the troll?

I'm pretty sure "the West" originated in Greece.

I know, right? Thank you, community college. But, yeah... I concur with the junk science sentiment. It's another "us versus them" thing where we try to compare human beings that essentially live on different planets. "Multiculturalism" isn't the death of the West, it's the future of the planet.

i think that folk have already referenced most of the main problems ...

i am surprised that this nonsense is taken seriously at all. it isn't science at any level.
"muslim" versus "western"?
what the fuck?

it didn't surprise me when i noted the source of the interview, a site maintained by a collaborator with david horowitz--so we're from jump in a neo-fascist space---which you'd think would make folk suspicious.

but maybe european neo-fascism is concerned with matters at the very best essentialist but more likely just racist in ways that differ enough from the american counter-parts (hysteria about "illegal immigrants" anyone?) to confuse readers.

but the fact that anything about this racist horseshit seems plausible would give us pause, maybe providing a reason to think about just what the united states became after 9/11/2001 and this not at the level of fringe neo-fascist political organizations but rather at the level of mainstream political discourse. this same opposition "muslim"/"western"----why it's the idiocy of the huntington thesis all over again. but it resonates somehow, seems almost reasonable...

that's a good indicator of how far into neo-fascist politics the united states drifted.

if you read other stuff by the good mister sennel, the opposition is straight up racism...fashion some ludicrous essential opposition between white christian "westernness" and some swarthy muslim Other and from there start to make arguments about the Importance of Repatriating Them.

this is the stuff of dr strangelove and the Problem of Contamination of Our Precious Bodily Fluids.

there are maybe conversations of interest to be had about immigration and the formation of collective identities and generational shifts and there are conversations to be had about the repellent politics of race and christian soldiery of the past decade but this is not the basis for any of them--unless the discussion is about the ways in which neo-fascist pseudo-science operates and how it can slide beneath the radar of intelligent people sometimes if it circulates unmarked. whence the importance of naming the fascists for what they are. but i digress.

Psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners? Basically none.

What about their inherit hatred of bacon?

...

God, I can't bring myself to reread the article. Is that normal?

QFT

(with no idea of what QFT means)

Psychological's
a word tool, little more so,
not defining us.

QFT = Quoted for truth

The more I think about it, the more I think that making any conclusion about "Muslim values" based on teens in Danish prisons is the intellectual equivalent of drawing conclusions about "Christian values" based on Texan Wal*Mart greeters.

Interesting read

Ok, so I’ve had some more time to digest this and come to a conclusion that there is some fascinating truth buried under all the bullshit.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great book titled Outliers. In it’s chapter ‘Rice Paddies and Math Tests’ he discussed the outcome geography on a personal attitude and cultural values. One particular point of interest was his look the feuding families living in Appalachian region of the US in the nineteenth century. He proposed that their cultural background and settlement location influenced their violent behavior.

The theory is that farming cultures force people to co-operate and theft of personal livelihood is unlikely - they would need to harvest the crops. This leads to a culture where anger must be suppressed and conflict has time to be defused. Herding cultures on the other hand force the shepherds to develop aggressive mindset due to their livelihood being on the line with the loss of every animal. Farmers have strength in numbers; herders must be tough individually.

This leads me back to Sennels’ observation on young Muslim development in aggression, self-confidence, individual responsibility and identity. To me his Dutch vs Muslim observations are strongly parallel of Gladwell’s farmer vs herder comparisons.

The issue of course is that not all Muslim’s come from herding cultures. Many herding societies adopt other religions the Irish, the American Appalachians, the central European countries to name of a few. Further many Muslim societies develop in farming regions and Islam is widely responsible for the development and retention of farming knowledge in the Middle Ages. I’ve always believed the religion bends to social norms.

So perhaps the greatest lesson from this article is that if governments wish to rehabilitate immigrants from aggressive societies they should use religion to their advantage and encourage the mingling of Muslims from herding and farming cultures to help integration into western society.

- Mantus

I hope you'll forgive me for being redundant:

The differences between recognized groups don't approach those between individuals.