Nicolai Sennels regularly contributes to Jihad Watch,
with articles on psychology and translations of Scandinavian and German
news. To help you get to know Sennels better, we decided to do an
interview.
Nicolai Sennels (born 1976) is a Danish psychologist. His first appearances in the Danish media concerned his unorthodox therapy methods that he developed as the only psychologist at Sønderbro, the youth prison (see here, here, here, here and here). He taught the young prisoners about mindfulness meditation and developed a special program on anger management. Sennels also developed a psychotherapeutic method that focused on teaching criminals with a low understanding of emotions and empathy how to take responsibility for their own behavior. In 2008, the prisoners of Sønderbro voted the facility as the best prison in Denmark. The leader of Social Services in the Copenhagen municipality concluded that this was due to the work of Nicolai Sennels (Amagerbladet, November 3, 2008).
At a conference on immigrant crime in 2008, arranged by the Copenhagen municipality, Sennels said that one should not use the term “criminal immigrants,” but “criminal Muslims,” since the majority of criminal immigrants have Muslim backgrounds. Seven out of ten inmates in the Danish youth prisons have immigrant backgrounds, and almost all of them are Muslims. Sennels was threatened that if he were to discuss his experiences, he would risk losing his job. This story developed into a national debate on the freedom of speech and became a widely discussed topic in the Danish media (please see here and here), and the Minister of Integration joined the discussion.
Sennels decided to publish a book on his experiences, Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist's Experiences from the Copenhagen Municipality, which was well received in both the official Psychologists Union's magazine and the newspapers. He found himself a new appointment at the Danish Ministry of Defense, and now once again he works as a psychologist for children and teenagers.
Sennels consulted on the case against Omar Khadr, a convicted terrorist serving in Guantanamo. He also contributed a chapter to the Dutch book Islam: Critical Essays on a Political Religion, along with Raymond Ibrahim, Hans Jansen, Michael Mannheimer, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or and other renowned critics of Islam and Muslim immigration.
Spencer: Nicolai, people know you mainly for your articles on the psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners (please see {BELOW} and {BELOW}). You have also contributed your professional insights in the case against the Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr. You wrote several articles, as well as a book on your conclusions. Could you give us a brief account of your findings?
Sennels: There are many differences between people brought up as Muslims and those who are brought up as Westerners. I identified four main differences that are important in order to understand the behavior of Muslims. They concern anger, self-confidence, the so-called "locus of control" and identity.
Westerners are brought up to think of anger as a sign of weakness, powerlessness and lack of self-control. "Big dogs don't have to bark," as we say in Denmark. In Muslim culture, anger is seen as a sign of strength. To Muslims, being aggressive is in itself an argument and a way of gaining respect. But we should not be impressed when we see pictures of bearded men hopping up and down, shouting like animals and shooting in the air. We should take it for what it is: the local madhouse passing by.
In Western culture, self-confidence is connected with the ability to meet criticism calmly and to respond rationally. We are raised to see people who easily get angry when criticized, as insecure and immature. In Muslim culture it is the opposite; it is honorable to respond aggressively and to engage in a physical fight in order to scare or force critics to withdraw, even if this results in a prison sentence or even death. They see non-aggressive responses to such threats and violence as a sign of a vulnerability that is to be exploited. They do not interpret a peaceful response as an invitation to enter into a dialogue, diplomacy, intellectual debate, compromise or peaceful coexistence.
"Locus of control" is a term used in psychology, and relates to the way in which people feel that their lives are controlled. In Western culture, we are brought up to have an "inner locus of control," meaning that we see our own inner emotions, reactions, decisions and views as the main deciding factor in our lives. There may be outer circumstances that influence our situation, but in the end, it is our own perception of a situation and the way we handle it that decides our future and our state of mind. The "inner locus of control" leads to increased self-responsibility and motivates people to become able to solve their own problems. Muslims are brought up to have an "outer locus of control." Their constant use of the term inshallah ("Allah willing") when talking about the future, as well as the fact that most aspects of their lives are decided by outer traditions and authorities, leaves very little space for individual freedom. Independent initiatives are often severely punished. This shapes their way of thinking, and means that when things go wrong, it is always the fault of others or the situation. Unfortunately, many Westerners go overboard with their self-responsibility and start to take responsibility for others' behavior as well. The mix of many Westerners being overly forgiving, their flexible attitude, and Muslim self-pity and blame is the psychological crowbar that has opened the West to Islamization. Our overly protective welfare system shields immigrants from noticing the consequences of their own misbehavior and thereby learning from their mistakes and motivating them to improve.
Finally, identity plays a big role when it comes to psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners. Westerners are taught to be open and tolerant toward other cultures, races, religions, etc. This makes us less critical, impairs our ability to discriminate, and makes our societies open to the influence of other cultural trends and values that may not always be constructive. Muslims, on the other hand, are taught again and again that they are superior, and that all others are so bad that Allah will throw them in hell when they die. While most Westerners find national and cultural pride embarrassing, Muslim culture's self-glorification, massive use of inbreeding, the rule that only Muslims can marry Muslims and their all-pervading social control function as self-protecting mechanisms on the levels of culture and identity.
In general, Westerners are taught to be kind, self-assured, self-responsible and tolerant, while Muslims are taught to be aggressive, insecure, irresponsible and intolerant.
Spencer: That reminds me of my interactions with the likes of Reza Aslan, Salam al-Marayati, Moustafa Zayed, Ahmed Rehab, Mohamed Elibiary, Ahmed Afzaal, Omid Safi, Ibrahim Hooper, Caner K. Dagli, Haroon S. Moghul, Nadir Ahmed, and so many others. Can you give a psychological explanation as to why so few Muslims integrate into our societies?
Sennels: Integration is dependent on motivation, freedom and intelligence. In other words, immigrants have to want to integrate, be allowed to by their family and friends, and mentally have to be able to do this.
People coming from cultures that are aimed mainly at physical survival, and in which religious practice and adherence to cultural traditions give more social status than having a good education and being self-supporting, usually are not very productive if they can live on the state. If on top of that, they can live in closed communities among others with the same culture and language, there is very little reason for them to get involved in our society. The only solution is to make the lack of integration so unpractical and economically non-beneficial that the only attractive choice is to receive our offer of state-sponsored repatriation.
As history and Muslim societies have show us time and time again, there is no need for more bloody examples before the majority does as expected. Muslim societies only have to kill, rape, incarcerate, kidnap and beat a few, before the rest "voluntarily" prefer Sharia to integration.
Thirdly, handling intellectually demanding jobs in our high-tech societies, is not easy for people brought up to believe that the Qur'an and Hadith, not school and science, has the answers. Being brought up in a Muslim family also makes it difficult to adapt to Western social conduct at workplaces, including contact between the sexes and emotional control. The fact that almost half of all Muslims are inbred, often many generations in a row, also does not increase cognitive abilities. In most cases, our workplaces demand that the employees are able to take initiative and be creative and self-responsible, which are all human qualities that are not welcomed among people who are first of all expected to blindly submit and who live in surroundings that punish independent thinking and behavior, sometimes even with death.
Spencer: As a psychologist, what is your explanation as to why Muslims oppress women?
Sennels: I see two psychological explanations for the oppression of women in Islam.
John Adams, the USA's 2nd president, said that he studied warfare so that his children could study agriculture and their children could study art. Abraham Maslow formulated a similar idea, the "hierarchy of needs," which shows how we aim toward a state of full development, possessing complete inner and outer freedoms, spontaneous playful creativity and love for all.
While Adams's and Maslow's views describe the goals and aims of our Western society beautifully as the full development of an individual’s potential, they do not apply to Islam or Muslim tradition. The aim of Islam and Muslims is dominance, not self-realization. Islam and Muslim culture is an aggressive movement, and giving space to female qualities such as sensitivity and empathy would be a hindrance, since it would allow for less aggressive human tendencies to emerge. Diplomacy, compromise, tolerance, democracy, compassion, sensitivity and empathy have to be locked away both on an internal and external level. On the outside, the oppression of women limits their influence, and their aversion against femininity in the outer world helps Muslims to also repress it inside themselves on the psychological level. Oppression of women is thus a psychological method of hardening a culture on the outside and people on the inside.
The other reason why Muslims oppress women and female sexuality, is the fact that women are simply stronger when it comes to sex. And it does not work for omnipotent, jealous and insecure Muslim macho-men that they in the most naked and vulnerable situation of all are the weaker party. Muslim men compensate this by oppressing their women and locking them up in apartments and ugly clumsy garments. The more embarrassing it is for the man that the woman is stronger in this essential aspect of life, the more he must dominate her in daily life. I had contact with two prostitutes who both said that Arab men did not last very long in bed. In many Muslim societies, a women's ability to enjoy sex is simply destroyed by a knife or a piece of glass. The jealous fantasy of the man not being able to satisfy his lustful wife, who therefore looks down on him and may even go to other men to gain satisfaction, is an ongoing source of torment for the wanna-be almighty Muslim man.
True love can only exist on the basis of respect and equality. Muslim societies are therefore full of men and women who never experienced true, satisfying and giving love. The emotional and sexual frustration that results from the inequality of the sexes and being forced to marry a partner that one does not love surely contribute to the aggression and emotional immaturity that Muslims display whenever they are numerous enough to feel that such behavior is acceptable. As one said, "forced marriage is the earthquake and what follows is a tsunami of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, child protection issues, suicide and murder."
Spencer: Why do you think that Muslims living in the West are statistically more criminal and violent than others?
Sennels: Well, there are several reasons. Firstly, the Islamic scriptures teach them that attacking and robbing non-Muslims is completely okay. Muslim culture's degrading view of non-Muslims functions in the same way as war propaganda. By hearing again and again how evil, disgusting and unworthy the enemy is, empathy is removed, aggression is strengthened, and the step towards harming the perceived enemy becomes smaller. The Qur'an and the Hadith are criminal books that allow and even force people to undertake criminal acts.
The psychological differences that I mentioned before also play a role when it comes to the high crime rate among Muslims. Our diplomatic and tolerant attitude is simply perceived as weakness and exploitable vulnerability. We may not like it, but we Westerners must abandon our peaceful, dialogue seeking and politically correct ways if we hope to communicate with Muslim society. Otherwise, they will think we are too scared to risk a conflict. They simply do not respect to or understand our preferred ways of communicating.
Finally, most Muslims are unable to earn real respect from us. Their immature behavior, their lack of contribution to the community and their lack of success makes them look like real losers in the eyes of civilized modern people. And it is not easy to belong to Allah's chosen people, who are supposedly better than the rest of the lot, when in fact they come in last every time. So, because of the lack of well-earned respect, and because of not being able to discriminate between the two, they try to be feared instead. It is Muslims, not Westerners, who invented the word Islamophobia. They want us to be afraid. But we are not. We feel sick of all their parasitism, violent behavior and mistreatment of their women. We have Islamonausea.
Spencer: Is there a psychological explanation as to why political correctness is still so widespread, in spite of the obvious evidence that Islam is an aggressive ideology and Muslim immigration is eroding our societies and destroying our economy?
Sennels: Yes, there is. As I already mentioned, we Westerners are brought up to think that tolerance and openness are positive human qualities. For a long time, we did not have to be aware that such qualities are only a strength as long as nobody wants to harm us. In our meeting with Islam and Muslim immigration, our biggest strength -- our willingness to be open towards the new, that made us so curious and inventive and therefore knowledgeable and rich -- has become our worst enemy.
In my article "Psychological explanations of Political Correctness," I go through the most important social psychological explanations on irrational herd behavior. The most important are the bystander effect and pluralistic ignorance.
The bystander effect is when a person uses another reaction to assess a situation. If others do not react, it is interpreted as a sign that the situation is not serious and that there is no need to act. That is why we need more people to act, and in good style.
Pluralistic ignorance appears when people know that there is a problembut feel that it would be embarrassing to point it out. Leftists screaming "racist," the general view that it is impolite to point out obvious weaknesses in others and our culture's definition of good people as being open and tolerant, makes many people keep their mouths shut and even doubt their own sense and senses. When a majority of people, as a result of insecurity and wanting to be a "good person," do not speak their mind, the result is pluralistic ignorance. The famous Danish fairytale about the Emperor's New Clothes is an excellent example.
In the end, it comes down to cowardliness and wanting to be a good person in the eyes of others. Compassion for 700 million women who cannot chose their own sexual partners, clothing or lifestyle, as well as an openly declared war on our values and countries, the quick decay of our big cities into Sharia colonies, and the destruction of our economy as a result of Muslim immigration apparently do not count.
Spencer: Besides writing about psychology, you also write and translate articles on Muslim criminals, politics etc. Are you just a critic of Islam who happens to be a psychologist?
Sennels: No, I am a psychologist who through his work with Muslims became aware of how big a mistake it is to allow Muslim immigration and the spread of Islam in our societies. Together with overpopulation, which should be taken care of by using the enormous amounts of foreign aid to pay people who have less money, this problem is the most dangerous threat to world peace today. It has now been several decades since we passed the stage at which the problem could be solved without blood, sweat and tears.
I have dedicated my life to making people aware of the danger that is already gnawing off big chunks of our cities, economy and freedom.
The most embarrassing thing I can imagine is that the only place in this universe with intelligent life will end as a planet-sized khalifat floating around in space. Just like the bad guys in The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and other archetypal stories of good and evil, Islam does not strive for freedom, happiness and love. Islam strives for the submission of Muslims to Allah and of non-Muslims to Muslims -- a dark, cold and humorless world where men are forced to mistreat their women and everybody is a slave to a god whose only wish is the enforcement of Sharia down to the very last comma. They do what they can to reach their final solution, and we must do what we can to prevent it from happening.
Spencer: You have several years of experience in writing and debating on Islam. You have participated in intellectual debates on Danish national TV and national radio about Islam and Muslim immigration. Many people are critical of Sharia and immigration, but do know dare to speak out -- or they are not sure how to express their views. Do you have any advice to people who feel like that?
Sennels: If we have compassion, people will feel it. Criticizing Islam is like shooting fish in a barrel, but we are not intellectual sadists. We are worried about the freedom of our women and the future of our children, and about our constitutions. And we know that the first and in many cases also the biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. We do not even have to use words like Islam or Muslims. We can just say that religions that oppress women and start holy wars make us sick. If you know that you are right, you do not have to be nervous or ashamed of yourself. Know that our politicians and media aim for the soft middle in society in order to be reelected and to sell newspapers and ads, and it is therefore up to ordinary people to protect our values, society and constitution.
Inform yourself and spread what you find out via email, social media, blogs and letters to the editor and to our politicians and journalists. When among others, the most important thing is that you do not force your view upon them and are happy and relaxed when you express your opinions. Only share your knowledge and your feelings when it feels natural -- wait until others mention the topic and use only a few words unless people really ask you several times what you think. If you are good, you can even use humor.
And do not fear to lose a few politically correct friends on the way. They will thank you in the end.
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February
27th 2008. On a cold and windy Wednesday (for cyclists like myself), I
took a deep breath, grabbed the microphone and did something that
changed my life. In front of the Copenhagen Mayor’s Integration and
Social Services Office there were gathered several journalists, a
faithful Muslim musician from the famous MTV-band ‘Outlandish,’ dozens
of Imams and Muslim spokesmen and a couple of hundred social workers
with Muslim and Danish backgrounds. I began to say what everybody
already knew, but, what nobody either wanted or dared to say: that those
who are referred to as foreign criminals, religious extremists, or
terrorists in the making and who are the cause of lawless parallel
societies (what the conference "Diversity and Safety in the City" was
about) are all Muslim. I argued that we should stop talking about "criminal foreigners" and start using the more precise term, "criminal Muslims."
As a psychologist, having had more than a hundred Muslim clients, I
told them that politicians and professional social workers need to
understand the cultural and religious backgrounds of criminal
foreigners. That is, if we want to come up with, at least, somewhat
effective and targeted plans on how to reduce the social unrest,
anti-democratic religious movements, the violent and anti-social forces
among foreigners.
Just as most soldiers in the front lines die in the first attack, many of those who attacked political correctness have experienced negative professional or social consequences. I was no exception. The Mayor of Social Services was clear. I should either refrain from using stigmatizing expressions or find myself another job. Actually I was trying to stop the so-called stigmatization of all the non-Muslim immigrants by focusing on the one group that creates all the problems. But you can't fight City Hall. Our biggest national newspapers and radio news programs got hold of the story and the mayor was strongly criticized by the media experts on free speech and by the Danish blog-sphere. For about a month there was not a day when my name was not in one or more newspapers and the fighters for free speech took another round. I was no longer an anonymous psychologist. My name was known by everybody who read newspapers in Denmark and especially Islam-critical blogs on the internet put me in the spotlight.
Instead
of keeping my mouth shut, I decided to write a book about my
experiences with Muslims based on hundreds of therapy sessions. The
whole circus that had happened concerning my case had already shown the
necessity of breaking the taboos around criminal Muslims. Further, a
serious discussion about the relationship between the Muslim culture and
criminal, antisocial behavior is, indeed, very much needed. I managed
to negotiate a deal that gave me four months severance pay. I am
probably the first psychologist in Copenhagen who was offered $20,000
dollars for quitting his job voluntarily. I guess they just wanted to
get rid of me, ASAP. I found a well-paying job as a Military
psychologist doing psychological screening of soldiers returning from
the war in Afghanistan. I also started writing my book, in which I
describe a psychological profile of the Muslim culture. The title of the
book is Among Criminal Muslims: A Psychologist's Experiences from the Copenhagen Municipality. (Free Press Society, 2009).
After having consulted with 150 young Muslim clients in therapy and 100 Danish clients (who, on average, shared the same age and social background as their Muslim inmates), my findings were that the Muslims’ cultural and religious experiences played a central role in their psychological development and criminal behavior. "Criminal foreigners" is not just a generalizing and imprecise term. It is unfair to non-Muslim foreigners and generally misleading.
Muslim culture has a very different view of anger and in many ways opposite to what we experience here in the West.
Expressions of anger and threats are probably the quickest way to lose one's face in Western culture. In discussions, those who lose their temper have automatically lost, and I guess most people have observed the feeling of shame and loss of social status following expressions of aggression at one's work place or at home. In the Muslim culture, aggressive behavior, especially threats, are generally seen to be accepted, and even expected as a way of handling conflicts and social discrepancies. If a Muslim does not respond in a threatening way to insults or social irritation, he, not "she" (Muslim women are, mostly, expected to be humble and to not show power) is seen as weak, as someone who cannot be depended upon and loses face.
In the eyes of most Westerners it looks immature and childish when people try to use threatening behavior, to mark their dislikes. A Danish saying goes "…Only small dogs bark. Big dogs do not have to." That saying is deeply rooted in our cultural psychology as a guideline for civilized social behavior. To us, aggressive behavior is a clear sign of weakness. It is a sign of not being in control of oneself and lacking ability to handle a situation. We see peoples’ ability to remain calm as self confidence, allowing them to create a constructive dialogue. Their knowledge of facts, use of common sense and ability in producing valid arguments is seen as a sign of strength.
The Islamic expression of "holy anger" is therefore completely contradictory to any Western understanding. Those two words in the same sentence sound contradictory to us. The terror-threatening and violent reaction of Muslims to the Danish Mohammed cartoons showing their prophet as a man willing to use violence to spread his message, is seen from our Western eyes as ironic. Muslims’ aggressive reaction to a picture showing their prophet as aggressive, completely confirms the truth of the statement made by Kurt Westergaard in his satiric drawing.
This cultural difference is exceedingly important when dealing with Muslim regimes and organizations. Our way of handling political disagreement goes through diplomatic dialogue, and calls on Muslim leaders to use compassion, compromise and common sense. This peaceful approach is seen by Muslims as an expression of weakness and lack of courage. Thus avoiding the risks of a real fight is seen by them as weakness; when experienced in Muslim culture, it is an invitation to exploitation.
There is another strong difference between the people of Western and Muslim cultures; their locus of control. Locus of control is a psychological term describing whether people experience their life influenced mainly, by internal or external factors. It is clear from a psychological point of view that Westerners feel that their lives are mainly influenced by inner forces – ourselves. This is reflected in our points of view, our ways of handling our emotions, our ways of thinking, our ways of relating to people around us, our motivation, our surplus, and our way of communicating. These internal factors are what guide our lives and determine if we feel good and self confident or not. Every Western library has several meters of self help books. Every kiosk has dozens of magazines for both women and men that tell us how to create happier and more successful lives for ourselves. Our phone books have columns of addresses for psychologists, coaches and therapists. All these things are aimed at helping us to help ourselves create the life that we want. Some might argue that all this introspectiveness is too much and that just doing what is useful for oneself and others here-and-now would be more constructive, but this is how our culture is.
All these things do not exist in Muslim culture and countries. The very little psychiatry and psychology that is taught, in only a few universities in the Muslim world, is imported from the West. It is mostly taught by teachers educated at Western universities and does not have roots in the Muslim culture.
But Muslims have something else. They have strict external rules, traditions and laws for human behavior. They have a God that decides their life's course. "Inshallah" follows every statement about future plans; if God wants it to happen. They have powerful Muslim clerics who set the directions for their community every Friday. These clerics dictate political views, child rearing behavior, and how or whether to integrate in Western societies.
The locus of control is central to our understanding of problems and their solutions. If we are raised in a culture where we learn that "…I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul," as William Ernest Henley wrote in his famous poem Invictus in 1875; we will, in case of personal problems, look at ourselves and ask: "…What did I do wrong?" and "…What can I do to change the situation?" People who have been taught throughout their entire lives that outer rules and traditions are more important than individual freedom and self reflection, will ask: "Who did this to me?" and "Who has to do something for me?"
Thus, the locus of control is central to the individual's understanding of freedom and responsibility. Even though our Christian based societies may, in certain situations, give too much emphasis on feelings of guilt; it also strengthens the individual's sense of being able to take responsibility for, and change one's own life. In societies shaped under Islamic and Qu’ranic influence there may be fewer feelings of guilt and thus, more freedom to demand the surroundings to adapt to one's own wishes and desires. This may include demands to wear Islamic costumes which can result in more Muslim demands for Islamization of our Western societies, but it is also a powerful source of victim mentality and leads to endless demands on one's surroundings. In a very concrete way this cultural tendency, shows itself in therapy, as a lack of remorse. The standard answer from violent Muslims was always: "…It is his own fault that I beat him up. He provoked me." Such excuses show that people experience their own reactions as caused by external factors and not by their own emotions, motivation and free will. Even though one's own feelings, when experiencing an insult, can be moderated by one's own point of view, this kind of self reflection does not happen to the same degree among Muslims as it does among Westerners. It only takes one person to beat up another: the guy who is doing the hitting. It also only takes one person to feel insulted. Being beaten and feeling insulted are thus strictly different social events. The latter depends on ones self, while the former is solely caused by outer circumstances. Unfortunately, this fact is not considered in Muslim culture and apparently also not by the supporters of laws on hate speech, racism and defamation.
The difference in mentality is clearly stated by the old Indian proverb:
Self reflection vs. consequence
I have seen with Muslims, this cultural difference, concerning locus of control. It has been the source of countless failed social and integration projects. Besides the great support from our welfare systems, our state departments offer a variety of entertainment and guidance to criminal Muslim youngsters hoping that the thankfulness and trust that normally appears from such generosity will create a good relationship, respect and willingness to cooperate. But when the program of social events and appointments with patient social workers ends and the demands of mature behavior appear, the "mutual respect" often evaporates.
Westerners feel that it is "our standards" that determine real consequences for people. We like to think, that if they get some guidance and a second chance most people will learn from that guidance and make use of their chance to improve. We are afraid to set strict boundaries because we do not like people to feel punished, even though our motivation is to stop people from destroying their own lives and the lives of others.
“If one truly wants to help a person, we should first of all start by finding where he is. This is the secret to the art of helping. Anyone who cannot do this is arrogant.”
European, Australian and North American politicians have spent trillions of Euros and Dollars in trying to avoid the apparently unavoidable; the failed integration of Muslims. Money has been spent on voluntary offers that our badly integrated foreigners can use if they want. They do sometimes try, but it very seldom works. What we have to understand is that we are dealing with people who grew up in cultures with an "outer - locus of control." Self reflection and self responsibility have much less importance to them.
During my years as a social worker, and later as a psychologist for antisocial individuals, I have realized that the only, reasonable way forward is to follow this three step procedure:
1) Provide guidance and help. If this does not work, then,
2) Establish Boundaries and limitations. If this does not work, then set
3) Consequences.
What I say here might seem to be more political than psychological. However, it is my extensive experience in giving therapy to Muslims that has led me to make this statement: We should not permit the destruction of our cities by lawless parallel societies, with groups of roaming criminal Muslims overloading of our welfare system and the growing justified fear that non-Muslims have of violence. The consequences should be so strict that it would be preferable for any anti-social Muslim to go back to a Muslim country, where they can understand, and can be understood by their own culture.
Our mistake is that we start with too long a permissive leash and as the antisocial youngsters make mistakes we slowly restrict their freedom. During this process these young people, very often, manage to destroy their own lives with bad habits, bad friends and bad criminal records. My own experience, and that of many colleagues, is that the only functional way, is to start with a shorter leash. Then, as difficult people show that they can handle increasing amounts of freedom you can extend their options.
This way of starting with a short leash is actually very normal in our Western way of raising children. We start with strict expectations concerning school, doing homework, and behaving properly. Then, as children get older and more mature they will receive more freedom from their parents. When they are 21 years old they are expected to have learned enough to be able to handle life and are free to choose whatever education, partner, religion, life style that they want.
In Muslim culture it is different - especially for the boys. They have lots of freedom in their early lives and as they get older more and more cultural/religious restrictions and expectations appear to support the family structure. By the time they are 20 years old, their parents often have already chosen their future wives or husbands. Other choices are also less free: the expectation, for instance, to either achieve high status in education or to work in the little family run shop, to support the family's reputation by attending Friday prayers in the local Mosque. The "education pyramid" is standing upside down in the West; less freedom in the beginning, more self responsibility as one gets older. In Muslim culture the pyramid stands with its wide end down; few expectations to follow civilized behavior as a boy, and less freedom as one grows more competent, to support one's own family and religion.
Muslim identity
From my experiences with the 150 Muslims I have had in therapy, only a handful felt themselves to be Danish. Most saw themselves as Somalis, Turks, Moroccans, Pakistanis, and Iraqis who now live in Denmark. Almost none of them saw themselves as an integrated part of the Danish society. They felt alienated and in opposition to Danes and the Danish society. They did not feel at home here.
This was a real shock to me. Many of my Muslim clients were second or even third generation immigrants, but, still they did not feel Danish. Actually it seemed that many of them were even more religious and hateful towards non-Muslims than their first generation immigrant parents. It was clear to me that they saw themselves as quite different and even better than non-Muslims. Young Danes, who showed an interest in Islam, immediately received positive attention from even the non-practicing Muslims. So did the more hardcore Muslims. The power circles always appear around the more devout Muslims, fanatic, and powerful. The most popular among the Muslims were the true Islamists. The general picture of such an individual is a male with well trimmed beard, elegant glasses, arrogant attitude, fine manners and clothing, the Qu’ran lying on their bed along with C.D.’s of Qu’ran readings. Typically, they learn a handful of conspiracy theories "proving" that the West, especially the US and the few million Jews left on this Earth, are the cause of all the problems in the Muslim world.
I did not keep statistics of any kind, but my experiences clearly reflect several research projects on Muslim identity in Europe. A French survey in Le Figaro showed that only 14 percent of the country's estimated five million Muslims see themselves as "more French than Muslim." Research made by the German Ministry of Interior shows that only 12 percent of Muslims living in Germany see themselves as more German than Muslim. A Danish survey published by the pro-Muslim pro-democratic organization Democratic Muslims led by the Danish PM and Muslim Naser Khader showed that only 14 percent of Muslims living in Denmark could identify themselves as "Democratic and Danish." Naser Khader by the way also reviewed my book:
The professional expertise that Nicolai Sennels has, whatever party he may belong to, is exceptional and with Nicolai Sennels' clear practical examples throughout the book, the reader comes infinitely closer to understanding some of the integration problems. The book should be required reading for all school teachers, social workers and municipalities.
Since Khader himself is a Muslim and even published a book about Muslim culture (Honor and Shame) this is a real compliment to my psychological conclusions.
So, this is THE question. Will integration of Muslims happen, satisfactorily, to the extent necessary? If you think yes, then on what basis do you make the assumption? If no, then what will you expect the consequences to be?
Honor
Honor is a central concept in the Muslim culture. Many Danish newspapers experienced mass rage from Muslims, when they published and re-published the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They have realized that Muslims are very easily offended.
What kind of honor needs to be protected by threats of terror and boycotts? Is this really honor? Maybe if seen through the glasses of a culture based on a book written 1400 years ago. However, when seen from the perspective of modern Western psychology, it surely is not. From our perspective such behavior is closer to being dishonorable.
Having to constantly keep up one’s appearances, becoming insecure and reacting aggressively when criticized is the result of low self esteem. Unfortunately the Muslim culture tells its men that criticism must be taken completely personally and met with childish reactions.
True self confidence would allow the individual the ability to think or say: “Ok. You have your own opinion about me or my religion. I have another opinion, and as I trust myself, I will not let my view of myself, or my central values, be disturbed by you.” Knowing one’s own strengths and weaknesses and accepting them is the core and basis of good self confidence.
If you had ever spent time in a Muslim community you experience this very clearly. You would find yourself constantly trying not to offend anyone and you’d treat everybody like a rotten egg. Jokes, irony and, especially, self-irony is as good as non-existent. It creates a superficial social environment where unhealthy hierarchies appear everywhere because nobody dares to, for instance, point out the weaknesses of childish men and make fun of the powerful. There is an old Danish fairytale about a little boy that points out the nakedness of the King; "He has no clothes on!!” embarrassing the proud King wearing his non-existent magic clothes, which are only visible to "good people" (actually, the King was just naked - because the tailor had cheated him!). Such a story could never have been written in a Muslim culture.
Many young Muslims become assailants. This is not just because of the Muslim cultural acceptance of aggression, but also because the Muslim honor mentality makes them into fragile, insecure men. Instead of being flexible and humorous they become stiff and develop fragile, glass-like, narcissistic personalities.
Unfortunately, most journalists and media people use the term “honor” when describing cases of violence where the offender makes excuses for himself by stating that his honor was offended. Since the concept of honor is completely integrated in the social rules of Muslim culture, it is seen to be justifiable when honor is threatened. This extends to beating or killing women who want to claim such basic human rights as to choose, for themselves, their own sexual partners. By using this term, as used by the offender, the media automatically takes the perspective of a clearly psychopathic and narcissistic excuse for treating other people badly. Instead, we should take our own Western culture as a basis when describing such crimes. Terms like “family execution," “childish jealousy,” “control maniac” or “insecure” would be much closer to our cultural understanding of such behavior.
Consequences of failed integration?
The World Economic Forum published a report Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue 2008 in which they show the results of a survey conducted in 12 non-Muslim and 12 Muslim countries. The last point in the report concerned the question: "Do you think violent conflict between the Muslim and Western worlds can be avoided?" A majority of all 24 countries think that this conflict can be avoided. However, this is not the same as believing that such peaceful development will actually occur. Overwhelmingly, 22 countries out of 24, in the survey expected that the “interaction between the Muslim and Western World is getting worse."
This survey clearly showed that while there is widespread hope for a peaceful outcome between the tensions of Islam and the West, people are seemingly very pessimistic.
Things are not going in the direction of peace.
Personally, my own conclusions match those of the survey. I believe that a violent conflict can be avoided. However, the chances of achieving that are getting slimmer and slimmer every month. We passed the point of no return years ago when such a conflict could have been avoided without taking drastic measures. Draconian measures may have to include shutting down Muslim immigration; demanding reform of Islamic organizations and leaders in the West; tightening the thumb screws on integration; becoming less dependent on oil in the Middle East; providing incentives to extremely overpopulated, impoverished countries to have less children; creating an alternative to the UN exclusively for democratic countries; cutting the EU's ability to force European countries to receive more Muslim immigrants and refugees; and perhaps even sending Muslims who proved themselves unable to adjust to our Western secular laws back to their countries of origin.
Such drastic measures are probably necessary. However, our politicians have decided to give the "long leash" first, then slowly and with much hesitation, to shorten it as things get worse and worse. With such politicians the Islamists can lean back and enjoy the show. The destruction of the "perverted," free, non-Islamic West will happen by itself.
Since the Muslim world is already here – in thousands of Muslim ghettoes in Europe, Australia and North America – the possibility that violent conflict will happen in Western cities all over the world is very great.
We need to understand the Muslim culture much better if we want to be able to stop such a catastrophe. We need to understand that it is not possible to integrate masses of Muslims into our Western societies. We need to understand that our non-confrontational Western ways of handling conflicts make us look weak and vulnerable to Muslim leaders. We need to understand that Muslim culture is much stronger and more determined than our guilt-ridden, self-excusing Western culture. We need to understand that Muslims will only feel at home in a Muslim culture and this is why their religious demands for Islamization of the West will never end.
The moment when a popular Islamic cleric declares a Muslim area as Islamic (such declarations are the tradition of Islam, and are happening all over the world - in China, Thailand, ex-Yugoslavia, Russia, Africa etc.) and orders his followers to attack all non-Islamic authorities entering the area, we will have civil wars. No State can tolerate such an attack on its authority and will have to stop it from happening and stop it from growing. These “no go” self-governing areas are already full of violent criminals, weapons and Islamic extremists. They will probably not give up either their guns or themselves to the authorities voluntarily. Such Islamic declarations have already happened on an unofficial level. All Western European countries have such “no go” areas where policemen and authorities are met with threats and flying stones upon entering; all while Islamic authorities such as Imams and homegrown Sharia courts freely rule these “no go” areas, creating Muslim ghettoes.
After having heard the stories from Muslims themselves about their culture, religion, home countries, Muslim ghettoes, their views on non-Muslims, democracy, women and freedom, I have no hope that we can avoid “blood, sweat and tears” during this conflict. It will take many idealistic women and men many years before we reach a point where we can be sure that our freedom-loving culture will win such a conflict. As it stands now, such victory is not at all certain. I hope that many brave people will stand up for what we all believe in, and be mindful of how easily it can be lost. They could write letters to their newspapers, study the Qu’ran and the crime statistics (the only two sources you need to convince yourself that Muslim immigration is a very bad idea). Then they could present their opinions in a confident manner when conversation turns to the subject of Islam and Muslim immigration at lunch, work and at family dinners. A popular movement composed of average citizens standing up against the immature and psychologically unhealthy culture of Islam is the way and the goal. Nothing is more important than that.
The result of the "Diversity, and Safety in the City" conference on February 27, 2008 was a so-called “Catalogue of Ideas.” The Catalogue had more than 118 ideas concerning what the media, the police, the state, the politicians and the Danes could to do improve integration. There were virtually no ideas about what foreigners themselves can do to improve integration.
Sennels: Thank Jamie.
Well., many people think that I took the prison job because I wanted to get a closer look at Muslim mentality, failed integration and Islam. But I did not. I was just looking for a job and having worked as a social worker taking care of teenagers for several years part time while studying at Copenhagen University to become a psychologist, it was natural for me to apply for a job involving juvenile offenders. I had no idea that seven out of ten teenagers in the average Danish youth prisons have a Muslim background. Since I was the first psychologist at the institution I was very free to develop my position as psychologist.
The main job was to find out the young peoples’ pedagogical and therapeutic needs and develop therapeutic methods fitted for those needs. And this I did and this is what my book is about. The unusual thing about my work is that I found out that my Muslim clients had certain psychological characteristics that my non-Muslim – mostly Danish – clients did not have. They were all between 15 and 17 years old, most of them showed antisocial behaviour and a big part of both groups came from homes with a certain lack of emotional support. I guess nine out of ten were boys and though the main part came from less well functioning homes I also had many Muslim and Danish clients who’s parents and elder siblings were well educated, had normal jobs and so on.
I worked in the prison for a bit less than three years and had around 150 Muslim clients and 100 Danish clients. I conducted group therapies and individual therapies and with such a large amount of both Muslim and non-Muslim clients I had a relatively large background material for understanding and comparing their psychological development and the underlying conditions influencing this development. Normal “real” research projects of this kind – consisting of long and several qualitative interviews – most often only have 20-30 subjects as background material.
FP: Ok, so some of your conclusions?
Sennels: Well, one significant conclusion was that having been raised in a Muslim environment – with Muslim parents and traditions – includes the risk of developing certain antisocial patterns.
About two thirds of all teenagers accused for criminal actions in Copenhagen have a Muslim background. For years the explanation for this phenomenon has been that Muslims are discriminated against by Danish employers and are thus unable to find a job. The consequence is that Muslims are poor – and this poverty then gets the blame for the high crime rate among young Muslim men.
As a humanist and psychologist I have to expose and oppose this faulty explanation. Explaining psychological development and complicated human mental and behavioural patterns by pointing on the amount of kroner, Euros or dollars rolling in to a person’s bank account every first bank day of the month is a very materialistic and two-dimensional view on the human being. What is first of all deciding our actions is our own free will and motivation – which are first of all influenced by the emotional, cultural and in some cases religious frame that we grew up in.
It is easy to establish a statistical connection between poverty and criminal behaviour – but what comes first? I saw a lot of young teenagers sowing the seeds for their own future unemployment by not going to school, staining their criminal records and developing unattractive social habits such as aggressiveness, insecurity and lack of respect for authorities.
FP: Did you find any real differences between Muslims coming from different parts of the Muslim world?
Sennels: My experience from working with Muslims is that the culture developed under Islamic influence supports the development of certain psychological characteristics. I had Muslim clients from most of the Muslim world: most of the Middle East, Muslim countries in Africa, Pakistan and ex-Yugoslavia. I did not register any major differences between the mentalities between these countries. The only real importance deciding the impact of Muslim mentality was whether the client himself identified himself strongly as belonging to the Muslim society or not. There was a quantitative difference from the often less Islamic Muslims from e.g. ex-Yugoslavia and the clients from the Middle East who mostly identified themselves strongly as being Muslims.
By far the most of my 150 Muslim clients expressed strong loyalty to their God, Allah, and their prophet but less than half was actively practising Islam by doing their prayers, Quran studies etc. But there did not seem to be any difference between the actively practising group and the group that could be called loyal but passive believers. Seen from the therapy room, the mentality stemming from Islamic influence on the societies where it is the dominating value system is so strongly rooted in the culture that Muslims are influenced by its dogmas and values no matter if they pray five times a day and can recite the Quran or not.
FP: Draw for us a psychological profile of Muslim culture. How does it shape a human being’s mind and behaviour to grow up in such a culture?
Sennels: The most important characteristics that I found concerns aggression, self-confidence, individual responsibility and identity.
Concerning anger, it quickly becomes clear that Muslims in general have a different view on aggression, anger and threatening behaviour than Danes and probably most of our Western world.
For most Westerners, it is an embarrassing sign of weakness if people become angry. This view on anger is probably consolidated already in early childhood. I have been working as a school psychologist for several years and bullying is a continuous problem at the schools that I work in. The interesting thing is that the children who are most likely to be the target of being bullied are the children that get angry the easiest. If people get angry we have a tendency to lose respect for them and in many cases we try to tease them to provoke them even more – with the pedagogical aim of helping the person to realize the childishness of his or her behaviour. Trying to get one’s will by acting aggressively or using threats is seen as immature and our reaction is often to ridicule or simply ignore them. Thus, the shortest way to lose face in our Western culture is to show anger.
It is completely opposite in the Muslim culture. While most of my Danish clients who had problems with anger felt embarrassed about it, none of my Muslim clients ever seemed to understand our view on anger. I spent countless hours doing Anger Management therapy with both Danish and Muslim clients and hence I had very good opportunities to experience the cultural differences concerning this specific emotion, ways of handling it and reacting to it.
In Muslim culture, it is expected that one should show anger and threatening behaviour if one is criticized or teased. If a Muslim does not react aggressively when criticized he is seen as weak, not worth trusting and he thus loses social status immediately.
This cocktail of cultural differences has sparked the ongoing debate on free speech all over the world. The free world’s criticism and jokes about Islam is met with anger and threats of terror. When a Danish cartoonist shows the Muslims’ prophet with a bomb in his turban to illustrate the fact that Mohammed conducted dozens of massacres and called for global violent jihad against non-Muslims, the reaction of Muslim leaders and their followers was exactly to confirm Westergaard’s drawing: They responded with jihad on all possible levels – threats of genocide, terror, economical boycott, lawsuits and using democratic systems in our countries, EU and the UN to challenge and destroy our laws on free speech.
The wisdom and bravery of any child in any school yard to people using aggression to hide their own insecurity because of a simple drawing would lead to more jokes and logic as a mean to pedagogically point out obvious human weaknesses. Unfortunately most of our politicians are not as wise and brave as the average school child.
FP: Expand a bit on the differences between Muslim and Western cultures in terms of self-confidence.
Sennels: The concept of honor in the Muslim culture is – just like in the case with anger – opposite of our Western view. It is common in the Muslim culture to be exceedingly aware of one’s status in the group, other peoples’ view of oneself and any signs of any kind of criticism. The aggressive response to anything that can make one insecure is seen as an expression of honorable behaviour. But what is honorable about that? What kind of honor needs to be defended by all means necessary – including the abolishment of women’s human rights, such as the right to pick their own sexual partners, clothes, husband and life style? What is honorable about anger and the lack of ability to ignore provocations and handle criticism constructively?
After listening to more than a hundred Muslim teenagers telling their stories about their feelings, thoughts, reactions, families, religion, culture, the life in their Muslim ghettos and their home countries, it became clear to me that to a Muslim such behavior is the very core of keeping one’s honor. But seen through the eyes of Western psychology, it is all an expression of a lack of self-confidence. According to our view, the base of being authentic and honorable is to know one’s strengths and weakness – and accepting them. The ability to think “your opinion about me, not mine – and mine counts to me” when provoked and being mature enough to handle criticism constructively is a source of social status in the Western world.
Unfortunately, the Muslim concept of honor transforms especially their men into fragile glass-like personalities that need to protect themselves by scaring their surroundings with their aggressive attitude. The show of so-called narcissistic rage is very common among Muslims. The fear of criticism is in many cases not far from paranoia. It is not without reason that self-irony and self-criticism is completely absent in the Muslim societies. Seen from a psychological perspective – whose aim is to produce self-confident, happy, free, loving and productive individuals; and not to please a hateful God or culture traditions – Muslim culture is in many ways psychologically unhealthy to grow up in.
FP: Ok and how does individual responsibility fit into all of this?
Sennels: To discuss individual responsibility, I need to first introduce the readers to the psychological term “locus of control.” Locus of control concerns if people see their life mainly influenced by inner or outer factors. In our Western culture, we see inner factors as more important than outer ones. Our point of view, our way of handling our emotions, our way of thinking, our way of reflecting, our way of reacting is all seen as ways that we decide our own lives. We may not always be aware of the way we think etc. and a whole industry has appeared because of that fact. Indeed, psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, coaches plus countless self-help books and magazines are overflowing in our societies and are all aiming at helping us to become aware of how we decide our own lives.
None of these things exists in the Muslim world. The few psychiatrists they have are often educated in the West and whatever psychology and pedagogy that exists in Muslim countries does not have root in the Muslim culture but are ideas imported from the West.
Thus, when a Westerner experiences problems he asks himself: “What can I change in myself/my life to become happier?” This mentality showed it self clearly among my Danish clients. It was deeply rooted in them that talking about oneself can be a way of finding better ways of handling one’s own life. When having Muslim clients on my couch it was in most cases like having someone from another planet visiting me. Under normal conditions, Westerners and Muslims can communicate relatively easy – as long as it does not involve criticism. But in a setting where the whole concept is centred about that the Muslim client has to talk about his own feelings and thoughts because the psychologist thinks that it will help him to become more happy and able to live constructively, the “chain falls of the bike” as we say in Denmark. They shake their heads: in which way can they become happier if they expose the weaknesses that they have been taught since birth to hide in order to retain their honor? No way, José. I finally managed to develop a therapeutic method that to a certain extent could address these cultural difficulties, but therapy and Muslim mentality will probably never become real friends.
An important aspect of this difference concerning locus of control is that people who see their own lives mainly guided by outer factors – a fearsome God, a powerful father, influential imams, ancient but strong cultural traditions – very easily develop a victim mentality. It is thus not without reason that conspiracies and blaming the non-Muslims are so central in Muslim leaders’ rhetoric and politics. This victim mentality also dominates the mentality of Muslim immigrants, who often have a long row of demands for economic support and Islamization of our societies to satisfy their personal needs.
FP: Well it becomes pretty obvious why Muslims cannot integrate into our Western society. Crystallize the reasons for us.
Sennels: My experience is that you need three things to be able to integrate. You need to want it, you need to be allowed and you need to have the surplus. Very few Muslim immigrants fulfil these three criteria.
First we have to ask ourselves: why should Muslim immigrants want to integrate? They can live their culture, receive enough money, and have a full functioning social life with their Muslim friends without even learning our language — or even working. There is not really anything that makes it necessary to integrate. Of course there exist immigrant Muslims who want to adapt to the lifestyle and mentality in their new country but they are very few. In France only 14 percent of the millions of Muslim immigrants see themselves as “more French than Muslim.” In Germany only 12 percent of Muslims identify themselves as more German than Muslim.
A survey in Denmark showed that only 14 percent of the Muslims living here can identify themselves as being Danish and democratic minded. My experience from my Muslim clients is that they do not see their Muslim identity as compatible with leading a Western life style. Being a Muslim also means that you see yourself as very different and actually as a better person than non-Muslims. This mentality easily leads to apartheid and racism. This is probably the reason that even though Muslim immigrants are more than five times as violent as ethnic Danes – according to crime statistics - three out of four victims of violence are Danish.
The second criteria – being allowed to integrate – is also not very common. There is an exceedingly strong social control in the Muslim society. Everybody is keeping an eye on everybody and if someone does not follow the cultural or religious codex they are met with strong criticism and risk to be excluded from their society – often even from their own family. In worst case – and there are many of those – especially Muslim women live under a constant death threat that keeps them from entering our Western life style that includes such human rights as to pick one’s own sexual partners, clothing style, friends, religion and life style overall. Most of my Muslim clients saw their religious and cultural background as the height of civilization and morality – leaving it would be seen as a kind of cultural and religious apostasy by their kinsmen. Such acts often have severe consequences in not only gangs like Hells Angels and other tribal communities but also – and especially – among Muslims.
Finally, it takes a lot of personal surplus to integrate into another culture. It involves changing a part of one’s identity from belonging to one group into belonging to a group with completely other cultural values and traditions. It is not just like changing a bad habit such as quitting smoking – integration goes much deeper concerning the individual’s psychology. I met a few Muslim girls who as part of Western inspired teenage rebelling wanted to integrate and did not care that they were not allowed. Those girls did not posses the personal surplus and ended up in complete identity crises, going too wild, doing drugs and having random sex with all kinds of strange men etc.
For these reasons I am completely convinced that Muslim integration will never happen to the necessary extent.
FP: What is your view of the future of Europe in terms of the skyrocketing Muslim population?
Sennels: We are in the historical embarrassing situation that we have invited millions of people to our continent that do not want to integrate and are also not able to. Since the integration of Muslims will never happen – a fact I think that has already been proven years ago – we will end up with a significant part of our population that are actively working to Islamize our societies. There exist both Muslims and non-Muslims that see this Islamization as Islamic jihad – but it is more than that: it is human nature. People who do not feel at home where they live will naturally strive to change their surroundings. Muslims attempts to Islamize our societies have just begun — as they are feeling stronger and stronger in power and numbers. This process is pushed forward by Muslim leaders inside and outside Europe and helped on its way by a kind of collective cowardice called Political Correctness.
The World Economic Forum published a huge survey in 12 Muslim and 12 non-Muslim countries in their report “Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue, January 2008.” The report in general shows a great amount of distrust between the two groups of countries and discloses strong feelings of enmity. The last question in the survey is: “Do you think violent conflict between the Muslim and Western worlds can be avoided or not?” The report shows that a majority of the populations in all 24 countries believed that such a conflict can be avoided. But at the same time a majority of the 22 countries think that “the interaction between the Muslim and Western world is getting worse.” The majority of people still haven’t lost their hope but at the same time a majority see this hope getting smaller and smaller.
As Muslim immigrants push for Islamization and the original Europeans increasingly feel being exploited and threatened by growing and still more violent Muslim communities, a continent wide civil war might become unavoidable. We are already on our way to get our own European Islamic Gaza Stripes where non-Islamic authorities are met with flying stones and angry crowds while Islamic authorities such as imams, groups of elderly men and home made Sharia courts, are free to exercise their power. Such developments are very alarming and should be confronted with large amounts of police, strict laws, and cuts on economic support for families having more children than the country’s average and demands that Muslim organizations and leaders reform their version of Islam.
My guess is we will see more dead police men and kidnappings as a mean to negotiate the release of imprisoned Muslim religious or gang leaders, terror bombs, economical and practical support from Muslim countries to Muslim communities here in the West. Economic and police resources are already being drained by the many consequences of Muslim immigration and the need for profound reforming of our welfare system and for involving the army is inevitable in the long run. The feeling of safety and social coherence is already long gone in many parts in hundreds of European cities as a result of Muslims’ antisocial behaviour and enmity towards non-Muslims.
As I see it, the greatest danger is that the common European will fall into strong negative feelings and that the population and our authorities will feel pressed to compromise our own humanistic values in order to overcome the catastrophe. The sooner we handle the problems the greater the chance is that we can keep our important and unique human values.
FP: It’s all pretty depressing what political correctness and the Left has achieved in engendering and overseeing this Muslim infiltration of our society. The Left wanted to destroy its host society and it shrewdly figured out how to do so through the weapon of “multiculturalism.” Talk a bit about where this might not all be hopeless, how those of us who care about or society’s values can fight back. What can we do to avoid the surrender that the West is engaged in as we speak?
Sennels: Well Jamie, first let me stress that our “surrender” so to speak would not be enough. Only mass conversion would satisfy the rules of the Quran and its preachers. And even though Muslim leaders continuously claim that the only way to ensure global peace and morality is for all of mankind to become followers of their prophet, I am not so sure: Muslim countries are definitely less peaceful and morality concerning free speech, human rights and respect for human life is clearly less existent under Islamic rule than anywhere else.
Besides my suggestions mentioned above, the Western world has to put a complete halt to Muslim immigration and non-Western immigrants who did not already receive a citizenship. They should either fulfil a long row of criteria concerning integration or leave the country. Permanent citizenships to Muslim refugees should not be possible. I would like to mention that the average price for having an asylum seeker living in Denmark is 33.000 Euros (45.000 US dollars) a year. According to UNHCR the price for helping a refugee in a refugee camp close to his own country is 33 Euros (45 US dollars).
We should in general make it so unpleasant and the economic disadvantage so big that the consequences of non-integration would motivate resident Muslims to emigrate – preferably to a Muslim country where they can live in a culture where they already know the language, culture and religion and do not live under the pressure to integrate and do not feel stigmatized by anti-immigration organisations and Islam critics.
Responsible lovers and protectors of our Western culture should make an effort to write letters to the editors, and internet bloggers have to make sure that the information that our main stream medias consciously avoid to publish gets known. We need to create a UN exclusively for democratic countries and the EU’s power to force immigration onto its member states should be taken away. Oil should only be used for transport, while heating should be replaced by green energy and nuclear power – to avoid dependency on Arab oil.
FP: Nicolai Sennels, thank you for joining us. You have shared some dark realities and warnings with us. I pray the West will eventually gain the will and capacity to defend itself.
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Nicolai Sennels (born 1976) is a Danish psychologist. His first appearances in the Danish media concerned his unorthodox therapy methods that he developed as the only psychologist at Sønderbro, the youth prison (see here, here, here, here and here). He taught the young prisoners about mindfulness meditation and developed a special program on anger management. Sennels also developed a psychotherapeutic method that focused on teaching criminals with a low understanding of emotions and empathy how to take responsibility for their own behavior. In 2008, the prisoners of Sønderbro voted the facility as the best prison in Denmark. The leader of Social Services in the Copenhagen municipality concluded that this was due to the work of Nicolai Sennels (Amagerbladet, November 3, 2008).
At a conference on immigrant crime in 2008, arranged by the Copenhagen municipality, Sennels said that one should not use the term “criminal immigrants,” but “criminal Muslims,” since the majority of criminal immigrants have Muslim backgrounds. Seven out of ten inmates in the Danish youth prisons have immigrant backgrounds, and almost all of them are Muslims. Sennels was threatened that if he were to discuss his experiences, he would risk losing his job. This story developed into a national debate on the freedom of speech and became a widely discussed topic in the Danish media (please see here and here), and the Minister of Integration joined the discussion.
Sennels decided to publish a book on his experiences, Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist's Experiences from the Copenhagen Municipality, which was well received in both the official Psychologists Union's magazine and the newspapers. He found himself a new appointment at the Danish Ministry of Defense, and now once again he works as a psychologist for children and teenagers.
Sennels consulted on the case against Omar Khadr, a convicted terrorist serving in Guantanamo. He also contributed a chapter to the Dutch book Islam: Critical Essays on a Political Religion, along with Raymond Ibrahim, Hans Jansen, Michael Mannheimer, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or and other renowned critics of Islam and Muslim immigration.
Spencer: Nicolai, people know you mainly for your articles on the psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners (please see {BELOW} and {BELOW}). You have also contributed your professional insights in the case against the Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr. You wrote several articles, as well as a book on your conclusions. Could you give us a brief account of your findings?
Sennels: There are many differences between people brought up as Muslims and those who are brought up as Westerners. I identified four main differences that are important in order to understand the behavior of Muslims. They concern anger, self-confidence, the so-called "locus of control" and identity.
Westerners are brought up to think of anger as a sign of weakness, powerlessness and lack of self-control. "Big dogs don't have to bark," as we say in Denmark. In Muslim culture, anger is seen as a sign of strength. To Muslims, being aggressive is in itself an argument and a way of gaining respect. But we should not be impressed when we see pictures of bearded men hopping up and down, shouting like animals and shooting in the air. We should take it for what it is: the local madhouse passing by.
In Western culture, self-confidence is connected with the ability to meet criticism calmly and to respond rationally. We are raised to see people who easily get angry when criticized, as insecure and immature. In Muslim culture it is the opposite; it is honorable to respond aggressively and to engage in a physical fight in order to scare or force critics to withdraw, even if this results in a prison sentence or even death. They see non-aggressive responses to such threats and violence as a sign of a vulnerability that is to be exploited. They do not interpret a peaceful response as an invitation to enter into a dialogue, diplomacy, intellectual debate, compromise or peaceful coexistence.
"Locus of control" is a term used in psychology, and relates to the way in which people feel that their lives are controlled. In Western culture, we are brought up to have an "inner locus of control," meaning that we see our own inner emotions, reactions, decisions and views as the main deciding factor in our lives. There may be outer circumstances that influence our situation, but in the end, it is our own perception of a situation and the way we handle it that decides our future and our state of mind. The "inner locus of control" leads to increased self-responsibility and motivates people to become able to solve their own problems. Muslims are brought up to have an "outer locus of control." Their constant use of the term inshallah ("Allah willing") when talking about the future, as well as the fact that most aspects of their lives are decided by outer traditions and authorities, leaves very little space for individual freedom. Independent initiatives are often severely punished. This shapes their way of thinking, and means that when things go wrong, it is always the fault of others or the situation. Unfortunately, many Westerners go overboard with their self-responsibility and start to take responsibility for others' behavior as well. The mix of many Westerners being overly forgiving, their flexible attitude, and Muslim self-pity and blame is the psychological crowbar that has opened the West to Islamization. Our overly protective welfare system shields immigrants from noticing the consequences of their own misbehavior and thereby learning from their mistakes and motivating them to improve.
Finally, identity plays a big role when it comes to psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners. Westerners are taught to be open and tolerant toward other cultures, races, religions, etc. This makes us less critical, impairs our ability to discriminate, and makes our societies open to the influence of other cultural trends and values that may not always be constructive. Muslims, on the other hand, are taught again and again that they are superior, and that all others are so bad that Allah will throw them in hell when they die. While most Westerners find national and cultural pride embarrassing, Muslim culture's self-glorification, massive use of inbreeding, the rule that only Muslims can marry Muslims and their all-pervading social control function as self-protecting mechanisms on the levels of culture and identity.
In general, Westerners are taught to be kind, self-assured, self-responsible and tolerant, while Muslims are taught to be aggressive, insecure, irresponsible and intolerant.
Spencer: That reminds me of my interactions with the likes of Reza Aslan, Salam al-Marayati, Moustafa Zayed, Ahmed Rehab, Mohamed Elibiary, Ahmed Afzaal, Omid Safi, Ibrahim Hooper, Caner K. Dagli, Haroon S. Moghul, Nadir Ahmed, and so many others. Can you give a psychological explanation as to why so few Muslims integrate into our societies?
Sennels: Integration is dependent on motivation, freedom and intelligence. In other words, immigrants have to want to integrate, be allowed to by their family and friends, and mentally have to be able to do this.
People coming from cultures that are aimed mainly at physical survival, and in which religious practice and adherence to cultural traditions give more social status than having a good education and being self-supporting, usually are not very productive if they can live on the state. If on top of that, they can live in closed communities among others with the same culture and language, there is very little reason for them to get involved in our society. The only solution is to make the lack of integration so unpractical and economically non-beneficial that the only attractive choice is to receive our offer of state-sponsored repatriation.
As history and Muslim societies have show us time and time again, there is no need for more bloody examples before the majority does as expected. Muslim societies only have to kill, rape, incarcerate, kidnap and beat a few, before the rest "voluntarily" prefer Sharia to integration.
Thirdly, handling intellectually demanding jobs in our high-tech societies, is not easy for people brought up to believe that the Qur'an and Hadith, not school and science, has the answers. Being brought up in a Muslim family also makes it difficult to adapt to Western social conduct at workplaces, including contact between the sexes and emotional control. The fact that almost half of all Muslims are inbred, often many generations in a row, also does not increase cognitive abilities. In most cases, our workplaces demand that the employees are able to take initiative and be creative and self-responsible, which are all human qualities that are not welcomed among people who are first of all expected to blindly submit and who live in surroundings that punish independent thinking and behavior, sometimes even with death.
Spencer: As a psychologist, what is your explanation as to why Muslims oppress women?
Sennels: I see two psychological explanations for the oppression of women in Islam.
John Adams, the USA's 2nd president, said that he studied warfare so that his children could study agriculture and their children could study art. Abraham Maslow formulated a similar idea, the "hierarchy of needs," which shows how we aim toward a state of full development, possessing complete inner and outer freedoms, spontaneous playful creativity and love for all.
While Adams's and Maslow's views describe the goals and aims of our Western society beautifully as the full development of an individual’s potential, they do not apply to Islam or Muslim tradition. The aim of Islam and Muslims is dominance, not self-realization. Islam and Muslim culture is an aggressive movement, and giving space to female qualities such as sensitivity and empathy would be a hindrance, since it would allow for less aggressive human tendencies to emerge. Diplomacy, compromise, tolerance, democracy, compassion, sensitivity and empathy have to be locked away both on an internal and external level. On the outside, the oppression of women limits their influence, and their aversion against femininity in the outer world helps Muslims to also repress it inside themselves on the psychological level. Oppression of women is thus a psychological method of hardening a culture on the outside and people on the inside.
The other reason why Muslims oppress women and female sexuality, is the fact that women are simply stronger when it comes to sex. And it does not work for omnipotent, jealous and insecure Muslim macho-men that they in the most naked and vulnerable situation of all are the weaker party. Muslim men compensate this by oppressing their women and locking them up in apartments and ugly clumsy garments. The more embarrassing it is for the man that the woman is stronger in this essential aspect of life, the more he must dominate her in daily life. I had contact with two prostitutes who both said that Arab men did not last very long in bed. In many Muslim societies, a women's ability to enjoy sex is simply destroyed by a knife or a piece of glass. The jealous fantasy of the man not being able to satisfy his lustful wife, who therefore looks down on him and may even go to other men to gain satisfaction, is an ongoing source of torment for the wanna-be almighty Muslim man.
True love can only exist on the basis of respect and equality. Muslim societies are therefore full of men and women who never experienced true, satisfying and giving love. The emotional and sexual frustration that results from the inequality of the sexes and being forced to marry a partner that one does not love surely contribute to the aggression and emotional immaturity that Muslims display whenever they are numerous enough to feel that such behavior is acceptable. As one said, "forced marriage is the earthquake and what follows is a tsunami of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, child protection issues, suicide and murder."
Spencer: Why do you think that Muslims living in the West are statistically more criminal and violent than others?
Sennels: Well, there are several reasons. Firstly, the Islamic scriptures teach them that attacking and robbing non-Muslims is completely okay. Muslim culture's degrading view of non-Muslims functions in the same way as war propaganda. By hearing again and again how evil, disgusting and unworthy the enemy is, empathy is removed, aggression is strengthened, and the step towards harming the perceived enemy becomes smaller. The Qur'an and the Hadith are criminal books that allow and even force people to undertake criminal acts.
The psychological differences that I mentioned before also play a role when it comes to the high crime rate among Muslims. Our diplomatic and tolerant attitude is simply perceived as weakness and exploitable vulnerability. We may not like it, but we Westerners must abandon our peaceful, dialogue seeking and politically correct ways if we hope to communicate with Muslim society. Otherwise, they will think we are too scared to risk a conflict. They simply do not respect to or understand our preferred ways of communicating.
Finally, most Muslims are unable to earn real respect from us. Their immature behavior, their lack of contribution to the community and their lack of success makes them look like real losers in the eyes of civilized modern people. And it is not easy to belong to Allah's chosen people, who are supposedly better than the rest of the lot, when in fact they come in last every time. So, because of the lack of well-earned respect, and because of not being able to discriminate between the two, they try to be feared instead. It is Muslims, not Westerners, who invented the word Islamophobia. They want us to be afraid. But we are not. We feel sick of all their parasitism, violent behavior and mistreatment of their women. We have Islamonausea.
Spencer: Is there a psychological explanation as to why political correctness is still so widespread, in spite of the obvious evidence that Islam is an aggressive ideology and Muslim immigration is eroding our societies and destroying our economy?
Sennels: Yes, there is. As I already mentioned, we Westerners are brought up to think that tolerance and openness are positive human qualities. For a long time, we did not have to be aware that such qualities are only a strength as long as nobody wants to harm us. In our meeting with Islam and Muslim immigration, our biggest strength -- our willingness to be open towards the new, that made us so curious and inventive and therefore knowledgeable and rich -- has become our worst enemy.
In my article "Psychological explanations of Political Correctness," I go through the most important social psychological explanations on irrational herd behavior. The most important are the bystander effect and pluralistic ignorance.
The bystander effect is when a person uses another reaction to assess a situation. If others do not react, it is interpreted as a sign that the situation is not serious and that there is no need to act. That is why we need more people to act, and in good style.
Pluralistic ignorance appears when people know that there is a problembut feel that it would be embarrassing to point it out. Leftists screaming "racist," the general view that it is impolite to point out obvious weaknesses in others and our culture's definition of good people as being open and tolerant, makes many people keep their mouths shut and even doubt their own sense and senses. When a majority of people, as a result of insecurity and wanting to be a "good person," do not speak their mind, the result is pluralistic ignorance. The famous Danish fairytale about the Emperor's New Clothes is an excellent example.
In the end, it comes down to cowardliness and wanting to be a good person in the eyes of others. Compassion for 700 million women who cannot chose their own sexual partners, clothing or lifestyle, as well as an openly declared war on our values and countries, the quick decay of our big cities into Sharia colonies, and the destruction of our economy as a result of Muslim immigration apparently do not count.
Spencer: Besides writing about psychology, you also write and translate articles on Muslim criminals, politics etc. Are you just a critic of Islam who happens to be a psychologist?
Sennels: No, I am a psychologist who through his work with Muslims became aware of how big a mistake it is to allow Muslim immigration and the spread of Islam in our societies. Together with overpopulation, which should be taken care of by using the enormous amounts of foreign aid to pay people who have less money, this problem is the most dangerous threat to world peace today. It has now been several decades since we passed the stage at which the problem could be solved without blood, sweat and tears.
I have dedicated my life to making people aware of the danger that is already gnawing off big chunks of our cities, economy and freedom.
The most embarrassing thing I can imagine is that the only place in this universe with intelligent life will end as a planet-sized khalifat floating around in space. Just like the bad guys in The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and other archetypal stories of good and evil, Islam does not strive for freedom, happiness and love. Islam strives for the submission of Muslims to Allah and of non-Muslims to Muslims -- a dark, cold and humorless world where men are forced to mistreat their women and everybody is a slave to a god whose only wish is the enforcement of Sharia down to the very last comma. They do what they can to reach their final solution, and we must do what we can to prevent it from happening.
Spencer: You have several years of experience in writing and debating on Islam. You have participated in intellectual debates on Danish national TV and national radio about Islam and Muslim immigration. Many people are critical of Sharia and immigration, but do know dare to speak out -- or they are not sure how to express their views. Do you have any advice to people who feel like that?
Sennels: If we have compassion, people will feel it. Criticizing Islam is like shooting fish in a barrel, but we are not intellectual sadists. We are worried about the freedom of our women and the future of our children, and about our constitutions. And we know that the first and in many cases also the biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. We do not even have to use words like Islam or Muslims. We can just say that religions that oppress women and start holy wars make us sick. If you know that you are right, you do not have to be nervous or ashamed of yourself. Know that our politicians and media aim for the soft middle in society in order to be reelected and to sell newspapers and ads, and it is therefore up to ordinary people to protect our values, society and constitution.
Inform yourself and spread what you find out via email, social media, blogs and letters to the editor and to our politicians and journalists. When among others, the most important thing is that you do not force your view upon them and are happy and relaxed when you express your opinions. Only share your knowledge and your feelings when it feels natural -- wait until others mention the topic and use only a few words unless people really ask you several times what you think. If you are good, you can even use humor.
And do not fear to lose a few politically correct friends on the way. They will thank you in the end.
-------------------------------
Muslims and Westerners: The Psychological Differences
by Nicolai Sennels (May 2010)
Introduction by Nancy Kobrin, author of The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing[1]
When I first read about Nicolai Sennels’ work concerning therapy, which he had conducted with criminal Muslims in Denmark, I knew that it would be groundbreaking. I hope that you the reader will listen closely to what he has to say.
Introduction by Nancy Kobrin, author of The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing[1]When I first read about Nicolai Sennels’ work concerning therapy, which he had conducted with criminal Muslims in Denmark, I knew that it would be groundbreaking. I hope that you the reader will listen closely to what he has to say.
I
also had the opportunity to conduct prison interviews of Muslim
detainees, which were not interrogations. Minneapolis has the largest
diaspora of Somali Muslims outside of Mogadishu, and there was an
overload in the county jail. I was trying to decide if I wanted to draw
up a research project. Pressured for time and with too many other
responsibilities plus receiving a death threat during one of the
interviews, I decided against it.
Like
Sennels, I came away with a similar sense that Western law enforcement
and the general public did not understand why there was so much crime in
the Muslim population. And why there has been this problem of jail
house converts to Islam who then become radicalized through contact with
other criminal Muslims during incarceration.
Islam
is the perfect religion to give justification for those who feel under
attack and to maintain the eternal “victim" fantasy. Islam is also
“higher” than Christianity because it comes last in co-opting the
revelations of Sinai and the New Testament. What a perfect receptacle
for projecting hatred. Islam incites, encourages and permits hatred of
the Jew and Jihad. It’s perfect for a fragile personality that has the
need to hate and the need to have an enemy. There are billions of people
out there who share those sentiments and that profile. As an underdog
religion, Islam provides great mass appeal, which even Eric Hoffer, the
author of the True Believer,
noted in 1951. It should come as no surprise that its numbers are
growing. If one has a grievance, Islam will take care of it.
Sennels
adeptly outlines the key problems of why Muslims are not able to
integrate into Western culture. What he doesn’t say, I shall name. We
are dealing with nothing more than paranoia. Sennels stresses that the
West must set boundaries because otherwise they will kill you. This kind
of rage is malignant borderline behavior as in serial killing. We
must come to understand such politically incorrect observations as
Sennels does in order to connect the dots concerning criminal Muslims
even though it is brutal.
Happy
well-adjusted children do not become suicide bombers nor do they become
criminals. Let us choose to know what we are dealing with rather than
bury our heads in sand out of terror. Let us meet the challenge straight
on as Sennels has. If the Swedes had intellectual fortitude, Nicolai
Sennels, the Dane, should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for standing
up and proclaiming that the “Emperor Has No Clothes.” But then again,
that is a Danish tale and the Swedes are left with Ingmar Bergman’s
drama. Need I say more?
[1]Dr.
Nancy Kobrin is a psychoanalyst with a clinical specialty in trauma.
Her Ph.D. is in romance and semitic languages, specializing in Aljamía,
Old Spanish in Arabic script. She did a two volume dissertation on
Ahadith Musa. She began to study the perpetrators of terrorist attacks
in the early 80s as the truck bombs went off in Lebanon. Residing in
Minnesota for many years she was asked to teach Radical Islam to the
Sheriff's Deputies of Hennepin County. She is an expert on the Minnesota
Somali diaspora and a graduate of the Human Terrain System program at
Leavenworth Kansas and was slated to go into Helmand Province. Her new
book is The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing.
___________________________________________________________________
Background
February
27th 2008. On a cold and windy Wednesday (for cyclists like myself), I
took a deep breath, grabbed the microphone and did something that
changed my life. In front of the Copenhagen Mayor’s Integration and
Social Services Office there were gathered several journalists, a
faithful Muslim musician from the famous MTV-band ‘Outlandish,’ dozens
of Imams and Muslim spokesmen and a couple of hundred social workers
with Muslim and Danish backgrounds. I began to say what everybody
already knew, but, what nobody either wanted or dared to say: that those
who are referred to as foreign criminals, religious extremists, or
terrorists in the making and who are the cause of lawless parallel
societies (what the conference "Diversity and Safety in the City" was
about) are all Muslim. I argued that we should stop talking about "criminal foreigners" and start using the more precise term, "criminal Muslims."
As a psychologist, having had more than a hundred Muslim clients, I
told them that politicians and professional social workers need to
understand the cultural and religious backgrounds of criminal
foreigners. That is, if we want to come up with, at least, somewhat
effective and targeted plans on how to reduce the social unrest,
anti-democratic religious movements, the violent and anti-social forces
among foreigners.
I was met with strong criticism from all sides and no support at all!
Just as most soldiers in the front lines die in the first attack, many of those who attacked political correctness have experienced negative professional or social consequences. I was no exception. The Mayor of Social Services was clear. I should either refrain from using stigmatizing expressions or find myself another job. Actually I was trying to stop the so-called stigmatization of all the non-Muslim immigrants by focusing on the one group that creates all the problems. But you can't fight City Hall. Our biggest national newspapers and radio news programs got hold of the story and the mayor was strongly criticized by the media experts on free speech and by the Danish blog-sphere. For about a month there was not a day when my name was not in one or more newspapers and the fighters for free speech took another round. I was no longer an anonymous psychologist. My name was known by everybody who read newspapers in Denmark and especially Islam-critical blogs on the internet put me in the spotlight.
Instead
of keeping my mouth shut, I decided to write a book about my
experiences with Muslims based on hundreds of therapy sessions. The
whole circus that had happened concerning my case had already shown the
necessity of breaking the taboos around criminal Muslims. Further, a
serious discussion about the relationship between the Muslim culture and
criminal, antisocial behavior is, indeed, very much needed. I managed
to negotiate a deal that gave me four months severance pay. I am
probably the first psychologist in Copenhagen who was offered $20,000
dollars for quitting his job voluntarily. I guess they just wanted to
get rid of me, ASAP. I found a well-paying job as a Military
psychologist doing psychological screening of soldiers returning from
the war in Afghanistan. I also started writing my book, in which I
describe a psychological profile of the Muslim culture. The title of the
book is Among Criminal Muslims: A Psychologist's Experiences from the Copenhagen Municipality. (Free Press Society, 2009).After having consulted with 150 young Muslim clients in therapy and 100 Danish clients (who, on average, shared the same age and social background as their Muslim inmates), my findings were that the Muslims’ cultural and religious experiences played a central role in their psychological development and criminal behavior. "Criminal foreigners" is not just a generalizing and imprecise term. It is unfair to non-Muslim foreigners and generally misleading.
Discussing
psychological characteristics of the Muslim culture is important.
Denmark has foreigners from all over the world and according to official
statistics from Danmarks Statistik all
non-Muslim groups of immigrants are less criminal than the ethnic
Danes. Even after adjusting, according to educational and economic
levels, all Muslim groups are more criminal than any other ethnic group.
Seven out of 10, in the youth prison where I worked, were Muslim.
The
book was reviewed in several magazines and newspapers and it
kickstarted the Danish debate on the relationship between cultural
background and criminal behavior. The Danish magazine for professional psychologists reviewed it:
….Among Criminal Muslims is a provocative eye opener, convincing and well founded with many concrete examples.
The professional magazine for teachers of teenagers wrote:
Sennels’ reflections and critical discussion concerning our efforts towards young criminals deserves to be widely known.
Our biggest national news paper Jyllands-Posten, that printed the Mohammad cartoons, wrote:
The
book is an original piece of pioneer work by focusing on the
responsibility of the individual and involving the impact of religion in
the shaping of the young person’s identity.
This is a summary of some of the things that I discovered.
Anger
Muslim culture has a very different view of anger and in many ways opposite to what we experience here in the West.
Expressions of anger and threats are probably the quickest way to lose one's face in Western culture. In discussions, those who lose their temper have automatically lost, and I guess most people have observed the feeling of shame and loss of social status following expressions of aggression at one's work place or at home. In the Muslim culture, aggressive behavior, especially threats, are generally seen to be accepted, and even expected as a way of handling conflicts and social discrepancies. If a Muslim does not respond in a threatening way to insults or social irritation, he, not "she" (Muslim women are, mostly, expected to be humble and to not show power) is seen as weak, as someone who cannot be depended upon and loses face.
In the eyes of most Westerners it looks immature and childish when people try to use threatening behavior, to mark their dislikes. A Danish saying goes "…Only small dogs bark. Big dogs do not have to." That saying is deeply rooted in our cultural psychology as a guideline for civilized social behavior. To us, aggressive behavior is a clear sign of weakness. It is a sign of not being in control of oneself and lacking ability to handle a situation. We see peoples’ ability to remain calm as self confidence, allowing them to create a constructive dialogue. Their knowledge of facts, use of common sense and ability in producing valid arguments is seen as a sign of strength.
The Islamic expression of "holy anger" is therefore completely contradictory to any Western understanding. Those two words in the same sentence sound contradictory to us. The terror-threatening and violent reaction of Muslims to the Danish Mohammed cartoons showing their prophet as a man willing to use violence to spread his message, is seen from our Western eyes as ironic. Muslims’ aggressive reaction to a picture showing their prophet as aggressive, completely confirms the truth of the statement made by Kurt Westergaard in his satiric drawing.
This cultural difference is exceedingly important when dealing with Muslim regimes and organizations. Our way of handling political disagreement goes through diplomatic dialogue, and calls on Muslim leaders to use compassion, compromise and common sense. This peaceful approach is seen by Muslims as an expression of weakness and lack of courage. Thus avoiding the risks of a real fight is seen by them as weakness; when experienced in Muslim culture, it is an invitation to exploitation.
Locus of control
There is another strong difference between the people of Western and Muslim cultures; their locus of control. Locus of control is a psychological term describing whether people experience their life influenced mainly, by internal or external factors. It is clear from a psychological point of view that Westerners feel that their lives are mainly influenced by inner forces – ourselves. This is reflected in our points of view, our ways of handling our emotions, our ways of thinking, our ways of relating to people around us, our motivation, our surplus, and our way of communicating. These internal factors are what guide our lives and determine if we feel good and self confident or not. Every Western library has several meters of self help books. Every kiosk has dozens of magazines for both women and men that tell us how to create happier and more successful lives for ourselves. Our phone books have columns of addresses for psychologists, coaches and therapists. All these things are aimed at helping us to help ourselves create the life that we want. Some might argue that all this introspectiveness is too much and that just doing what is useful for oneself and others here-and-now would be more constructive, but this is how our culture is.
All these things do not exist in Muslim culture and countries. The very little psychiatry and psychology that is taught, in only a few universities in the Muslim world, is imported from the West. It is mostly taught by teachers educated at Western universities and does not have roots in the Muslim culture.
But Muslims have something else. They have strict external rules, traditions and laws for human behavior. They have a God that decides their life's course. "Inshallah" follows every statement about future plans; if God wants it to happen. They have powerful Muslim clerics who set the directions for their community every Friday. These clerics dictate political views, child rearing behavior, and how or whether to integrate in Western societies.
The locus of control is central to our understanding of problems and their solutions. If we are raised in a culture where we learn that "…I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul," as William Ernest Henley wrote in his famous poem Invictus in 1875; we will, in case of personal problems, look at ourselves and ask: "…What did I do wrong?" and "…What can I do to change the situation?" People who have been taught throughout their entire lives that outer rules and traditions are more important than individual freedom and self reflection, will ask: "Who did this to me?" and "Who has to do something for me?"
Thus, the locus of control is central to the individual's understanding of freedom and responsibility. Even though our Christian based societies may, in certain situations, give too much emphasis on feelings of guilt; it also strengthens the individual's sense of being able to take responsibility for, and change one's own life. In societies shaped under Islamic and Qu’ranic influence there may be fewer feelings of guilt and thus, more freedom to demand the surroundings to adapt to one's own wishes and desires. This may include demands to wear Islamic costumes which can result in more Muslim demands for Islamization of our Western societies, but it is also a powerful source of victim mentality and leads to endless demands on one's surroundings. In a very concrete way this cultural tendency, shows itself in therapy, as a lack of remorse. The standard answer from violent Muslims was always: "…It is his own fault that I beat him up. He provoked me." Such excuses show that people experience their own reactions as caused by external factors and not by their own emotions, motivation and free will. Even though one's own feelings, when experiencing an insult, can be moderated by one's own point of view, this kind of self reflection does not happen to the same degree among Muslims as it does among Westerners. It only takes one person to beat up another: the guy who is doing the hitting. It also only takes one person to feel insulted. Being beaten and feeling insulted are thus strictly different social events. The latter depends on ones self, while the former is solely caused by outer circumstances. Unfortunately, this fact is not considered in Muslim culture and apparently also not by the supporters of laws on hate speech, racism and defamation.
The difference in mentality is clearly stated by the old Indian proverb:
You
can walk around softly everywhere by putting on a pair of shoes, or you
can demand that the whole Earth becomes covered by soft leather.
It is a question of locus of control.
Self reflection vs. consequence
I have seen with Muslims, this cultural difference, concerning locus of control. It has been the source of countless failed social and integration projects. Besides the great support from our welfare systems, our state departments offer a variety of entertainment and guidance to criminal Muslim youngsters hoping that the thankfulness and trust that normally appears from such generosity will create a good relationship, respect and willingness to cooperate. But when the program of social events and appointments with patient social workers ends and the demands of mature behavior appear, the "mutual respect" often evaporates.
Westerners feel that it is "our standards" that determine real consequences for people. We like to think, that if they get some guidance and a second chance most people will learn from that guidance and make use of their chance to improve. We are afraid to set strict boundaries because we do not like people to feel punished, even though our motivation is to stop people from destroying their own lives and the lives of others.
What we have to realize is that we need to be flexible to think outside of our own cultural boxes. I would like to quote from our Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard from his book Either/Or: A Fragment of Life:
“If one truly wants to help a person, we should first of all start by finding where he is. This is the secret to the art of helping. Anyone who cannot do this is arrogant.”
European, Australian and North American politicians have spent trillions of Euros and Dollars in trying to avoid the apparently unavoidable; the failed integration of Muslims. Money has been spent on voluntary offers that our badly integrated foreigners can use if they want. They do sometimes try, but it very seldom works. What we have to understand is that we are dealing with people who grew up in cultures with an "outer - locus of control." Self reflection and self responsibility have much less importance to them.
During my years as a social worker, and later as a psychologist for antisocial individuals, I have realized that the only, reasonable way forward is to follow this three step procedure:
1) Provide guidance and help. If this does not work, then,
2) Establish Boundaries and limitations. If this does not work, then set
3) Consequences.
What I say here might seem to be more political than psychological. However, it is my extensive experience in giving therapy to Muslims that has led me to make this statement: We should not permit the destruction of our cities by lawless parallel societies, with groups of roaming criminal Muslims overloading of our welfare system and the growing justified fear that non-Muslims have of violence. The consequences should be so strict that it would be preferable for any anti-social Muslim to go back to a Muslim country, where they can understand, and can be understood by their own culture.
Our mistake is that we start with too long a permissive leash and as the antisocial youngsters make mistakes we slowly restrict their freedom. During this process these young people, very often, manage to destroy their own lives with bad habits, bad friends and bad criminal records. My own experience, and that of many colleagues, is that the only functional way, is to start with a shorter leash. Then, as difficult people show that they can handle increasing amounts of freedom you can extend their options.
This way of starting with a short leash is actually very normal in our Western way of raising children. We start with strict expectations concerning school, doing homework, and behaving properly. Then, as children get older and more mature they will receive more freedom from their parents. When they are 21 years old they are expected to have learned enough to be able to handle life and are free to choose whatever education, partner, religion, life style that they want.
In Muslim culture it is different - especially for the boys. They have lots of freedom in their early lives and as they get older more and more cultural/religious restrictions and expectations appear to support the family structure. By the time they are 20 years old, their parents often have already chosen their future wives or husbands. Other choices are also less free: the expectation, for instance, to either achieve high status in education or to work in the little family run shop, to support the family's reputation by attending Friday prayers in the local Mosque. The "education pyramid" is standing upside down in the West; less freedom in the beginning, more self responsibility as one gets older. In Muslim culture the pyramid stands with its wide end down; few expectations to follow civilized behavior as a boy, and less freedom as one grows more competent, to support one's own family and religion.
Muslim identity
From my experiences with the 150 Muslims I have had in therapy, only a handful felt themselves to be Danish. Most saw themselves as Somalis, Turks, Moroccans, Pakistanis, and Iraqis who now live in Denmark. Almost none of them saw themselves as an integrated part of the Danish society. They felt alienated and in opposition to Danes and the Danish society. They did not feel at home here.
This was a real shock to me. Many of my Muslim clients were second or even third generation immigrants, but, still they did not feel Danish. Actually it seemed that many of them were even more religious and hateful towards non-Muslims than their first generation immigrant parents. It was clear to me that they saw themselves as quite different and even better than non-Muslims. Young Danes, who showed an interest in Islam, immediately received positive attention from even the non-practicing Muslims. So did the more hardcore Muslims. The power circles always appear around the more devout Muslims, fanatic, and powerful. The most popular among the Muslims were the true Islamists. The general picture of such an individual is a male with well trimmed beard, elegant glasses, arrogant attitude, fine manners and clothing, the Qu’ran lying on their bed along with C.D.’s of Qu’ran readings. Typically, they learn a handful of conspiracy theories "proving" that the West, especially the US and the few million Jews left on this Earth, are the cause of all the problems in the Muslim world.
I did not keep statistics of any kind, but my experiences clearly reflect several research projects on Muslim identity in Europe. A French survey in Le Figaro showed that only 14 percent of the country's estimated five million Muslims see themselves as "more French than Muslim." Research made by the German Ministry of Interior shows that only 12 percent of Muslims living in Germany see themselves as more German than Muslim. A Danish survey published by the pro-Muslim pro-democratic organization Democratic Muslims led by the Danish PM and Muslim Naser Khader showed that only 14 percent of Muslims living in Denmark could identify themselves as "Democratic and Danish." Naser Khader by the way also reviewed my book:
The professional expertise that Nicolai Sennels has, whatever party he may belong to, is exceptional and with Nicolai Sennels' clear practical examples throughout the book, the reader comes infinitely closer to understanding some of the integration problems. The book should be required reading for all school teachers, social workers and municipalities.
Since Khader himself is a Muslim and even published a book about Muslim culture (Honor and Shame) this is a real compliment to my psychological conclusions.
Being a Muslim clearly overrules whatever national identity one has. Samuel P. Huntington - author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order
- described a "U" analogy. My findings are very close to those of
Huntington. The tops of the two "towers" of the "U" are where Muslims
feel "belonging to the Umma" (the world wide Muslim community),
and "belonging to the tribe" (sticking together with other Muslims in
the same geographical area). At the bottom of the “U” is national
identity. For Westerners it is the opposite, our "U" stands upside down.
Our feeling of obligation to the country where we live is stronger
than our religion or group.
If integration just consists of learning the language and finding a job, it is not so difficult. But if integration also includes developing mental habits of equally respecting non-Muslims it is simply impossible for most Muslims. They see themselves as special, will always try to live together, create their own Muslim/Islamic parallel societies, feel separated and have less respect towards non-Muslims. True integration doesn’t have to, necessarily, imply religious conversion. However, for Muslims it certainly presupposes cultural conversion. Clearly, very few Muslims have the will, social freedom and strength of personality to go through such a psychologically demanding process.
If integration just consists of learning the language and finding a job, it is not so difficult. But if integration also includes developing mental habits of equally respecting non-Muslims it is simply impossible for most Muslims. They see themselves as special, will always try to live together, create their own Muslim/Islamic parallel societies, feel separated and have less respect towards non-Muslims. True integration doesn’t have to, necessarily, imply religious conversion. However, for Muslims it certainly presupposes cultural conversion. Clearly, very few Muslims have the will, social freedom and strength of personality to go through such a psychologically demanding process.
So, this is THE question. Will integration of Muslims happen, satisfactorily, to the extent necessary? If you think yes, then on what basis do you make the assumption? If no, then what will you expect the consequences to be?
Honor
Honor is a central concept in the Muslim culture. Many Danish newspapers experienced mass rage from Muslims, when they published and re-published the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They have realized that Muslims are very easily offended.
What kind of honor needs to be protected by threats of terror and boycotts? Is this really honor? Maybe if seen through the glasses of a culture based on a book written 1400 years ago. However, when seen from the perspective of modern Western psychology, it surely is not. From our perspective such behavior is closer to being dishonorable.
Having to constantly keep up one’s appearances, becoming insecure and reacting aggressively when criticized is the result of low self esteem. Unfortunately the Muslim culture tells its men that criticism must be taken completely personally and met with childish reactions.
True self confidence would allow the individual the ability to think or say: “Ok. You have your own opinion about me or my religion. I have another opinion, and as I trust myself, I will not let my view of myself, or my central values, be disturbed by you.” Knowing one’s own strengths and weaknesses and accepting them is the core and basis of good self confidence.
If you had ever spent time in a Muslim community you experience this very clearly. You would find yourself constantly trying not to offend anyone and you’d treat everybody like a rotten egg. Jokes, irony and, especially, self-irony is as good as non-existent. It creates a superficial social environment where unhealthy hierarchies appear everywhere because nobody dares to, for instance, point out the weaknesses of childish men and make fun of the powerful. There is an old Danish fairytale about a little boy that points out the nakedness of the King; "He has no clothes on!!” embarrassing the proud King wearing his non-existent magic clothes, which are only visible to "good people" (actually, the King was just naked - because the tailor had cheated him!). Such a story could never have been written in a Muslim culture.
Many young Muslims become assailants. This is not just because of the Muslim cultural acceptance of aggression, but also because the Muslim honor mentality makes them into fragile, insecure men. Instead of being flexible and humorous they become stiff and develop fragile, glass-like, narcissistic personalities.
Unfortunately, most journalists and media people use the term “honor” when describing cases of violence where the offender makes excuses for himself by stating that his honor was offended. Since the concept of honor is completely integrated in the social rules of Muslim culture, it is seen to be justifiable when honor is threatened. This extends to beating or killing women who want to claim such basic human rights as to choose, for themselves, their own sexual partners. By using this term, as used by the offender, the media automatically takes the perspective of a clearly psychopathic and narcissistic excuse for treating other people badly. Instead, we should take our own Western culture as a basis when describing such crimes. Terms like “family execution," “childish jealousy,” “control maniac” or “insecure” would be much closer to our cultural understanding of such behavior.
Consequences of failed integration?
The World Economic Forum published a report Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue 2008 in which they show the results of a survey conducted in 12 non-Muslim and 12 Muslim countries. The last point in the report concerned the question: "Do you think violent conflict between the Muslim and Western worlds can be avoided?" A majority of all 24 countries think that this conflict can be avoided. However, this is not the same as believing that such peaceful development will actually occur. Overwhelmingly, 22 countries out of 24, in the survey expected that the “interaction between the Muslim and Western World is getting worse."
This survey clearly showed that while there is widespread hope for a peaceful outcome between the tensions of Islam and the West, people are seemingly very pessimistic.
Things are not going in the direction of peace.
Personally, my own conclusions match those of the survey. I believe that a violent conflict can be avoided. However, the chances of achieving that are getting slimmer and slimmer every month. We passed the point of no return years ago when such a conflict could have been avoided without taking drastic measures. Draconian measures may have to include shutting down Muslim immigration; demanding reform of Islamic organizations and leaders in the West; tightening the thumb screws on integration; becoming less dependent on oil in the Middle East; providing incentives to extremely overpopulated, impoverished countries to have less children; creating an alternative to the UN exclusively for democratic countries; cutting the EU's ability to force European countries to receive more Muslim immigrants and refugees; and perhaps even sending Muslims who proved themselves unable to adjust to our Western secular laws back to their countries of origin.
Such drastic measures are probably necessary. However, our politicians have decided to give the "long leash" first, then slowly and with much hesitation, to shorten it as things get worse and worse. With such politicians the Islamists can lean back and enjoy the show. The destruction of the "perverted," free, non-Islamic West will happen by itself.
Since the Muslim world is already here – in thousands of Muslim ghettoes in Europe, Australia and North America – the possibility that violent conflict will happen in Western cities all over the world is very great.
We need to understand the Muslim culture much better if we want to be able to stop such a catastrophe. We need to understand that it is not possible to integrate masses of Muslims into our Western societies. We need to understand that our non-confrontational Western ways of handling conflicts make us look weak and vulnerable to Muslim leaders. We need to understand that Muslim culture is much stronger and more determined than our guilt-ridden, self-excusing Western culture. We need to understand that Muslims will only feel at home in a Muslim culture and this is why their religious demands for Islamization of the West will never end.
The moment when a popular Islamic cleric declares a Muslim area as Islamic (such declarations are the tradition of Islam, and are happening all over the world - in China, Thailand, ex-Yugoslavia, Russia, Africa etc.) and orders his followers to attack all non-Islamic authorities entering the area, we will have civil wars. No State can tolerate such an attack on its authority and will have to stop it from happening and stop it from growing. These “no go” self-governing areas are already full of violent criminals, weapons and Islamic extremists. They will probably not give up either their guns or themselves to the authorities voluntarily. Such Islamic declarations have already happened on an unofficial level. All Western European countries have such “no go” areas where policemen and authorities are met with threats and flying stones upon entering; all while Islamic authorities such as Imams and homegrown Sharia courts freely rule these “no go” areas, creating Muslim ghettoes.
After having heard the stories from Muslims themselves about their culture, religion, home countries, Muslim ghettoes, their views on non-Muslims, democracy, women and freedom, I have no hope that we can avoid “blood, sweat and tears” during this conflict. It will take many idealistic women and men many years before we reach a point where we can be sure that our freedom-loving culture will win such a conflict. As it stands now, such victory is not at all certain. I hope that many brave people will stand up for what we all believe in, and be mindful of how easily it can be lost. They could write letters to their newspapers, study the Qu’ran and the crime statistics (the only two sources you need to convince yourself that Muslim immigration is a very bad idea). Then they could present their opinions in a confident manner when conversation turns to the subject of Islam and Muslim immigration at lunch, work and at family dinners. A popular movement composed of average citizens standing up against the immature and psychologically unhealthy culture of Islam is the way and the goal. Nothing is more important than that.
The result of the "Diversity, and Safety in the City" conference on February 27, 2008 was a so-called “Catalogue of Ideas.” The Catalogue had more than 118 ideas concerning what the media, the police, the state, the politicians and the Danes could to do improve integration. There were virtually no ideas about what foreigners themselves can do to improve integration.
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Among Criminal Muslims
I would like to talk to you today about your experience working with young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen prison. Let’s begin by talking about how you got into your line of work.Sennels: Thank Jamie.
Well., many people think that I took the prison job because I wanted to get a closer look at Muslim mentality, failed integration and Islam. But I did not. I was just looking for a job and having worked as a social worker taking care of teenagers for several years part time while studying at Copenhagen University to become a psychologist, it was natural for me to apply for a job involving juvenile offenders. I had no idea that seven out of ten teenagers in the average Danish youth prisons have a Muslim background. Since I was the first psychologist at the institution I was very free to develop my position as psychologist.
The main job was to find out the young peoples’ pedagogical and therapeutic needs and develop therapeutic methods fitted for those needs. And this I did and this is what my book is about. The unusual thing about my work is that I found out that my Muslim clients had certain psychological characteristics that my non-Muslim – mostly Danish – clients did not have. They were all between 15 and 17 years old, most of them showed antisocial behaviour and a big part of both groups came from homes with a certain lack of emotional support. I guess nine out of ten were boys and though the main part came from less well functioning homes I also had many Muslim and Danish clients who’s parents and elder siblings were well educated, had normal jobs and so on.
I worked in the prison for a bit less than three years and had around 150 Muslim clients and 100 Danish clients. I conducted group therapies and individual therapies and with such a large amount of both Muslim and non-Muslim clients I had a relatively large background material for understanding and comparing their psychological development and the underlying conditions influencing this development. Normal “real” research projects of this kind – consisting of long and several qualitative interviews – most often only have 20-30 subjects as background material.
FP: Ok, so some of your conclusions?
Sennels: Well, one significant conclusion was that having been raised in a Muslim environment – with Muslim parents and traditions – includes the risk of developing certain antisocial patterns.
About two thirds of all teenagers accused for criminal actions in Copenhagen have a Muslim background. For years the explanation for this phenomenon has been that Muslims are discriminated against by Danish employers and are thus unable to find a job. The consequence is that Muslims are poor – and this poverty then gets the blame for the high crime rate among young Muslim men.
As a humanist and psychologist I have to expose and oppose this faulty explanation. Explaining psychological development and complicated human mental and behavioural patterns by pointing on the amount of kroner, Euros or dollars rolling in to a person’s bank account every first bank day of the month is a very materialistic and two-dimensional view on the human being. What is first of all deciding our actions is our own free will and motivation – which are first of all influenced by the emotional, cultural and in some cases religious frame that we grew up in.
It is easy to establish a statistical connection between poverty and criminal behaviour – but what comes first? I saw a lot of young teenagers sowing the seeds for their own future unemployment by not going to school, staining their criminal records and developing unattractive social habits such as aggressiveness, insecurity and lack of respect for authorities.
FP: Did you find any real differences between Muslims coming from different parts of the Muslim world?
Sennels: My experience from working with Muslims is that the culture developed under Islamic influence supports the development of certain psychological characteristics. I had Muslim clients from most of the Muslim world: most of the Middle East, Muslim countries in Africa, Pakistan and ex-Yugoslavia. I did not register any major differences between the mentalities between these countries. The only real importance deciding the impact of Muslim mentality was whether the client himself identified himself strongly as belonging to the Muslim society or not. There was a quantitative difference from the often less Islamic Muslims from e.g. ex-Yugoslavia and the clients from the Middle East who mostly identified themselves strongly as being Muslims.
By far the most of my 150 Muslim clients expressed strong loyalty to their God, Allah, and their prophet but less than half was actively practising Islam by doing their prayers, Quran studies etc. But there did not seem to be any difference between the actively practising group and the group that could be called loyal but passive believers. Seen from the therapy room, the mentality stemming from Islamic influence on the societies where it is the dominating value system is so strongly rooted in the culture that Muslims are influenced by its dogmas and values no matter if they pray five times a day and can recite the Quran or not.
FP: Draw for us a psychological profile of Muslim culture. How does it shape a human being’s mind and behaviour to grow up in such a culture?
Sennels: The most important characteristics that I found concerns aggression, self-confidence, individual responsibility and identity.
Concerning anger, it quickly becomes clear that Muslims in general have a different view on aggression, anger and threatening behaviour than Danes and probably most of our Western world.
For most Westerners, it is an embarrassing sign of weakness if people become angry. This view on anger is probably consolidated already in early childhood. I have been working as a school psychologist for several years and bullying is a continuous problem at the schools that I work in. The interesting thing is that the children who are most likely to be the target of being bullied are the children that get angry the easiest. If people get angry we have a tendency to lose respect for them and in many cases we try to tease them to provoke them even more – with the pedagogical aim of helping the person to realize the childishness of his or her behaviour. Trying to get one’s will by acting aggressively or using threats is seen as immature and our reaction is often to ridicule or simply ignore them. Thus, the shortest way to lose face in our Western culture is to show anger.
It is completely opposite in the Muslim culture. While most of my Danish clients who had problems with anger felt embarrassed about it, none of my Muslim clients ever seemed to understand our view on anger. I spent countless hours doing Anger Management therapy with both Danish and Muslim clients and hence I had very good opportunities to experience the cultural differences concerning this specific emotion, ways of handling it and reacting to it.
In Muslim culture, it is expected that one should show anger and threatening behaviour if one is criticized or teased. If a Muslim does not react aggressively when criticized he is seen as weak, not worth trusting and he thus loses social status immediately.
This cocktail of cultural differences has sparked the ongoing debate on free speech all over the world. The free world’s criticism and jokes about Islam is met with anger and threats of terror. When a Danish cartoonist shows the Muslims’ prophet with a bomb in his turban to illustrate the fact that Mohammed conducted dozens of massacres and called for global violent jihad against non-Muslims, the reaction of Muslim leaders and their followers was exactly to confirm Westergaard’s drawing: They responded with jihad on all possible levels – threats of genocide, terror, economical boycott, lawsuits and using democratic systems in our countries, EU and the UN to challenge and destroy our laws on free speech.
The wisdom and bravery of any child in any school yard to people using aggression to hide their own insecurity because of a simple drawing would lead to more jokes and logic as a mean to pedagogically point out obvious human weaknesses. Unfortunately most of our politicians are not as wise and brave as the average school child.
FP: Expand a bit on the differences between Muslim and Western cultures in terms of self-confidence.
Sennels: The concept of honor in the Muslim culture is – just like in the case with anger – opposite of our Western view. It is common in the Muslim culture to be exceedingly aware of one’s status in the group, other peoples’ view of oneself and any signs of any kind of criticism. The aggressive response to anything that can make one insecure is seen as an expression of honorable behaviour. But what is honorable about that? What kind of honor needs to be defended by all means necessary – including the abolishment of women’s human rights, such as the right to pick their own sexual partners, clothes, husband and life style? What is honorable about anger and the lack of ability to ignore provocations and handle criticism constructively?
After listening to more than a hundred Muslim teenagers telling their stories about their feelings, thoughts, reactions, families, religion, culture, the life in their Muslim ghettos and their home countries, it became clear to me that to a Muslim such behavior is the very core of keeping one’s honor. But seen through the eyes of Western psychology, it is all an expression of a lack of self-confidence. According to our view, the base of being authentic and honorable is to know one’s strengths and weakness – and accepting them. The ability to think “your opinion about me, not mine – and mine counts to me” when provoked and being mature enough to handle criticism constructively is a source of social status in the Western world.
Unfortunately, the Muslim concept of honor transforms especially their men into fragile glass-like personalities that need to protect themselves by scaring their surroundings with their aggressive attitude. The show of so-called narcissistic rage is very common among Muslims. The fear of criticism is in many cases not far from paranoia. It is not without reason that self-irony and self-criticism is completely absent in the Muslim societies. Seen from a psychological perspective – whose aim is to produce self-confident, happy, free, loving and productive individuals; and not to please a hateful God or culture traditions – Muslim culture is in many ways psychologically unhealthy to grow up in.
FP: Ok and how does individual responsibility fit into all of this?
Sennels: To discuss individual responsibility, I need to first introduce the readers to the psychological term “locus of control.” Locus of control concerns if people see their life mainly influenced by inner or outer factors. In our Western culture, we see inner factors as more important than outer ones. Our point of view, our way of handling our emotions, our way of thinking, our way of reflecting, our way of reacting is all seen as ways that we decide our own lives. We may not always be aware of the way we think etc. and a whole industry has appeared because of that fact. Indeed, psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, coaches plus countless self-help books and magazines are overflowing in our societies and are all aiming at helping us to become aware of how we decide our own lives.
None of these things exists in the Muslim world. The few psychiatrists they have are often educated in the West and whatever psychology and pedagogy that exists in Muslim countries does not have root in the Muslim culture but are ideas imported from the West.
Thus, when a Westerner experiences problems he asks himself: “What can I change in myself/my life to become happier?” This mentality showed it self clearly among my Danish clients. It was deeply rooted in them that talking about oneself can be a way of finding better ways of handling one’s own life. When having Muslim clients on my couch it was in most cases like having someone from another planet visiting me. Under normal conditions, Westerners and Muslims can communicate relatively easy – as long as it does not involve criticism. But in a setting where the whole concept is centred about that the Muslim client has to talk about his own feelings and thoughts because the psychologist thinks that it will help him to become more happy and able to live constructively, the “chain falls of the bike” as we say in Denmark. They shake their heads: in which way can they become happier if they expose the weaknesses that they have been taught since birth to hide in order to retain their honor? No way, José. I finally managed to develop a therapeutic method that to a certain extent could address these cultural difficulties, but therapy and Muslim mentality will probably never become real friends.
An important aspect of this difference concerning locus of control is that people who see their own lives mainly guided by outer factors – a fearsome God, a powerful father, influential imams, ancient but strong cultural traditions – very easily develop a victim mentality. It is thus not without reason that conspiracies and blaming the non-Muslims are so central in Muslim leaders’ rhetoric and politics. This victim mentality also dominates the mentality of Muslim immigrants, who often have a long row of demands for economic support and Islamization of our societies to satisfy their personal needs.
FP: Well it becomes pretty obvious why Muslims cannot integrate into our Western society. Crystallize the reasons for us.
Sennels: My experience is that you need three things to be able to integrate. You need to want it, you need to be allowed and you need to have the surplus. Very few Muslim immigrants fulfil these three criteria.
First we have to ask ourselves: why should Muslim immigrants want to integrate? They can live their culture, receive enough money, and have a full functioning social life with their Muslim friends without even learning our language — or even working. There is not really anything that makes it necessary to integrate. Of course there exist immigrant Muslims who want to adapt to the lifestyle and mentality in their new country but they are very few. In France only 14 percent of the millions of Muslim immigrants see themselves as “more French than Muslim.” In Germany only 12 percent of Muslims identify themselves as more German than Muslim.
A survey in Denmark showed that only 14 percent of the Muslims living here can identify themselves as being Danish and democratic minded. My experience from my Muslim clients is that they do not see their Muslim identity as compatible with leading a Western life style. Being a Muslim also means that you see yourself as very different and actually as a better person than non-Muslims. This mentality easily leads to apartheid and racism. This is probably the reason that even though Muslim immigrants are more than five times as violent as ethnic Danes – according to crime statistics - three out of four victims of violence are Danish.
The second criteria – being allowed to integrate – is also not very common. There is an exceedingly strong social control in the Muslim society. Everybody is keeping an eye on everybody and if someone does not follow the cultural or religious codex they are met with strong criticism and risk to be excluded from their society – often even from their own family. In worst case – and there are many of those – especially Muslim women live under a constant death threat that keeps them from entering our Western life style that includes such human rights as to pick one’s own sexual partners, clothing style, friends, religion and life style overall. Most of my Muslim clients saw their religious and cultural background as the height of civilization and morality – leaving it would be seen as a kind of cultural and religious apostasy by their kinsmen. Such acts often have severe consequences in not only gangs like Hells Angels and other tribal communities but also – and especially – among Muslims.
Finally, it takes a lot of personal surplus to integrate into another culture. It involves changing a part of one’s identity from belonging to one group into belonging to a group with completely other cultural values and traditions. It is not just like changing a bad habit such as quitting smoking – integration goes much deeper concerning the individual’s psychology. I met a few Muslim girls who as part of Western inspired teenage rebelling wanted to integrate and did not care that they were not allowed. Those girls did not posses the personal surplus and ended up in complete identity crises, going too wild, doing drugs and having random sex with all kinds of strange men etc.
For these reasons I am completely convinced that Muslim integration will never happen to the necessary extent.
FP: What is your view of the future of Europe in terms of the skyrocketing Muslim population?
Sennels: We are in the historical embarrassing situation that we have invited millions of people to our continent that do not want to integrate and are also not able to. Since the integration of Muslims will never happen – a fact I think that has already been proven years ago – we will end up with a significant part of our population that are actively working to Islamize our societies. There exist both Muslims and non-Muslims that see this Islamization as Islamic jihad – but it is more than that: it is human nature. People who do not feel at home where they live will naturally strive to change their surroundings. Muslims attempts to Islamize our societies have just begun — as they are feeling stronger and stronger in power and numbers. This process is pushed forward by Muslim leaders inside and outside Europe and helped on its way by a kind of collective cowardice called Political Correctness.
The World Economic Forum published a huge survey in 12 Muslim and 12 non-Muslim countries in their report “Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue, January 2008.” The report in general shows a great amount of distrust between the two groups of countries and discloses strong feelings of enmity. The last question in the survey is: “Do you think violent conflict between the Muslim and Western worlds can be avoided or not?” The report shows that a majority of the populations in all 24 countries believed that such a conflict can be avoided. But at the same time a majority of the 22 countries think that “the interaction between the Muslim and Western world is getting worse.” The majority of people still haven’t lost their hope but at the same time a majority see this hope getting smaller and smaller.
As Muslim immigrants push for Islamization and the original Europeans increasingly feel being exploited and threatened by growing and still more violent Muslim communities, a continent wide civil war might become unavoidable. We are already on our way to get our own European Islamic Gaza Stripes where non-Islamic authorities are met with flying stones and angry crowds while Islamic authorities such as imams, groups of elderly men and home made Sharia courts, are free to exercise their power. Such developments are very alarming and should be confronted with large amounts of police, strict laws, and cuts on economic support for families having more children than the country’s average and demands that Muslim organizations and leaders reform their version of Islam.
My guess is we will see more dead police men and kidnappings as a mean to negotiate the release of imprisoned Muslim religious or gang leaders, terror bombs, economical and practical support from Muslim countries to Muslim communities here in the West. Economic and police resources are already being drained by the many consequences of Muslim immigration and the need for profound reforming of our welfare system and for involving the army is inevitable in the long run. The feeling of safety and social coherence is already long gone in many parts in hundreds of European cities as a result of Muslims’ antisocial behaviour and enmity towards non-Muslims.
As I see it, the greatest danger is that the common European will fall into strong negative feelings and that the population and our authorities will feel pressed to compromise our own humanistic values in order to overcome the catastrophe. The sooner we handle the problems the greater the chance is that we can keep our important and unique human values.
FP: It’s all pretty depressing what political correctness and the Left has achieved in engendering and overseeing this Muslim infiltration of our society. The Left wanted to destroy its host society and it shrewdly figured out how to do so through the weapon of “multiculturalism.” Talk a bit about where this might not all be hopeless, how those of us who care about or society’s values can fight back. What can we do to avoid the surrender that the West is engaged in as we speak?
Sennels: Well Jamie, first let me stress that our “surrender” so to speak would not be enough. Only mass conversion would satisfy the rules of the Quran and its preachers. And even though Muslim leaders continuously claim that the only way to ensure global peace and morality is for all of mankind to become followers of their prophet, I am not so sure: Muslim countries are definitely less peaceful and morality concerning free speech, human rights and respect for human life is clearly less existent under Islamic rule than anywhere else.
Besides my suggestions mentioned above, the Western world has to put a complete halt to Muslim immigration and non-Western immigrants who did not already receive a citizenship. They should either fulfil a long row of criteria concerning integration or leave the country. Permanent citizenships to Muslim refugees should not be possible. I would like to mention that the average price for having an asylum seeker living in Denmark is 33.000 Euros (45.000 US dollars) a year. According to UNHCR the price for helping a refugee in a refugee camp close to his own country is 33 Euros (45 US dollars).
We should in general make it so unpleasant and the economic disadvantage so big that the consequences of non-integration would motivate resident Muslims to emigrate – preferably to a Muslim country where they can live in a culture where they already know the language, culture and religion and do not live under the pressure to integrate and do not feel stigmatized by anti-immigration organisations and Islam critics.
Responsible lovers and protectors of our Western culture should make an effort to write letters to the editors, and internet bloggers have to make sure that the information that our main stream medias consciously avoid to publish gets known. We need to create a UN exclusively for democratic countries and the EU’s power to force immigration onto its member states should be taken away. Oil should only be used for transport, while heating should be replaced by green energy and nuclear power – to avoid dependency on Arab oil.
FP: Nicolai Sennels, thank you for joining us. You have shared some dark realities and warnings with us. I pray the West will eventually gain the will and capacity to defend itself.
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