What’s the matter with the Muslims in our midst?
The arrests in the British bombing plot of some 24 homegrown Jihadists – including at least three recent converts to Islam—suggest a persistent problem that won’t yield to the normal processes of acculturation and assimilation.
Is there some innate element in Islamic identity itself that makes devout believers dysfunctional and dangerous? Or, as suggested by several papers recently presented to the American Psychological Association, are troubled Muslims merely responding to the groundless bigotry of their host societies in the West?
Psychologist Mona Amer of Yale University Medical School studied 611 Arab-American adults and found that they “had much worse mental health than Americans overall.” In particular, the people in her sample showed alarming levels of clinical depression, with about one half of those she studied showing serious symptoms of this disorder, compared to only 20% of a similar group in the general population. In an interview with USA TODAY, Dr. Amer blamed discriminatory attitudes from the public at large for the deep problems of the Arab-American and Muslim communities. “Muslims may have different kinds of names or dress differently and, especially since 9/11, they’re ostracized more,” she said. According to her study, “verbal harassment and discrimination correlate with worse mental health.”
Concluding that prejudice causes these obvious psychological problems, however, violates one of the fundamental principles of social science: correlation does not prove causation. It’s just as reasonable to assume that Muslims who suffer from depression and other disorders would provoke more discrimination and wariness, as it is to conclude that the verbal harassment or social exclusion provokes more mental illness.
Moreover, some the alleged “bigotry” highlighted by USA TODAY actually represents an altogether rational response to recent developments in the war on Islamo-Nazi terror. No one should feel surprised – or disapproving – that some 31% of respondents to a Gallup Poll said they would feel “more nervous flying if a Muslim man was on the plane.” Considering the fact that nearly 100% of deadly airline incidents over the last twenty years have, in fact, involved Muslim men, this hardly constitutes an unreasonable fear. Nor does it seem unforgivably bigoted that 44% of the public thinks that U.S. Muslims are “too extreme in their religious beliefs,” or that 52% don’t see them as “respectful to women.”
Rather than debating the substance of these concerns, apologists for the Islamic community attempt to persuade the nation at large that Muslims constitute an innocent, unfairly targeted group of victims. In May, “The Journal of Muslim Mental Health” began publication, regularly blaming intolerance and misunderstanding for the troubles in Islamic communities. According to USA TODAY, “in surveys of Muslim spiritual leaders to be reported at the psychological association meeting, the imams report a surge in worshippers seeking help for anxiety and stress related to possible discrimination.”
At least the new discussion focuses on the obviously dysfunctional nature of many Muslim communities, even if it avoids the obvious and logical conclusion that these problems actually originate with self-destructive elements in Islamic beliefs, not in intolerant reactions to Islam. For instance, if you argue that Western prejudice against Islam, and insensitive social interactions with non-believers, account for the violent, suicidal and depressed status of so many Muslims, then one must conclude that the faithful “back home” in predominantly Islamic societies would display far fewer of these difficulties than their counterparts in London, Amsterdam, Paris or Dearborn. In fact, all-Muslim societies (Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq, Algeria, and many others) remain the most violent, brutal, impoverished and benighted cultures on earth; immigrants from those nightmarish lands do vastly better when they resettle in the West, not worse.
If Western prejudice represents the core problem facing Islamic communities, then why do the two million (or more) Muslims in the United States count as the wealthiest, most successful believers anywhere on earth? Why do the one million Arab citizens of Israel enjoy by far the best standard of living and the highest levels of education (according to UN figures) of any Arabs in the Middle East? Logical analysis suggests that more devout Muslims who wear traditional robes and head coverings fare worse than their assimilated counterparts not because they provoke more prejudice from their neighbors, but because they have isolated themselves more fully in a deeply dysfunctional, even demented, medieval culture.
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