Writings by Anders Breivik indicate that, as an adolescent, he felt repeatedly bullied by Muslim immigrants in Oslo. It is not an indictment of Muslims generally to say that this was probably the case.
It seems to be common for young males who are immigrants or the children of immigrants (or part of a minority group) to form gangs and to engage in petty criminal activity. Every immigrant group in America has been known for the criminal behavior of at least some of its young males. The expression "paddy wagon" as a legacy of Irish-American crime. Teddy Roosevelt, who had served as a New York assemblyman early in his career, commented publicly on the criminality of young Jewish males. (In our own time, this is almost unbelievable.) It is also common for young people from established families to resent newcomers and make their lives unbearable.
It also seems to be the case that people who join far-right hate groups often report being bullied by members of the group they despite. A quick perusal of a website called "Stormfront," will bear this out, at least anecdotally. The youth forum is filled with complaints by young people about being bullied by African-Americans and Hispanics.
The combination of youth and forced association seems to be an especially volatile one. In contrast to work, church, or clubs, school is mandatory in a way that other human associations are not. While people are constrained by financial necessity to hold jobs they despise, young people are constrained by law to attend school and in many states can be brought into the justice system if they don't. The only institutions more authoritarian are the military and prisons.
In such environments, petty incidents escalate into open group warfare. I once taught at a school that experienced severe tensions between African-American and Haitian youths. No one remembers how it started, but it seems to have originated in middle school. This feud lasted for years and resulted in several deaths and at least one person being sentenced to 25 years. (He won an appeal and will only serve 6 years.) Other people were shot and recovered.
By asserting that Anders Breivik was bullied, in no way do I mean to approve of or minimize his actions. Rather, I am suggesting that if we want to prevent such massacres from occurring in the future, we need to do three things:
1. Acknowledge the reality of ethnic tension and the fact that, especially among adolescents, this tension will frequently turn violent.
2. Recognize the seriousness of this violence. Because it is "kid's stuff," don't assume that it is minor, that the kids will work it out, or that it will not leave lasting damage.
3. Take active steps to stop it. Most methods will involve education of the young people involved, increased supervision of schools and enhanced patrolling of troubled neighborhoods.
Don't spend time wondering if ethnic violence is occurring in your community. It almost certainly is, especially among adolescents. If other factors are at work -- mental illness, antidepressant medication that seems to provoke outburst of rage, and easy access to guns -- this tension will almost certainly erupt into acts of extraordinary violence.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Attending an Islamic Center
In spite of all the talk about multiculturalism and diversity, sometimes cultural differences are non-negotiable. A few weeks ago, I had such an experience at an Islamic Center.
By way of background, let me state that I believe the U.S. treatment of Arab and Muslim peoples is criminal. The United States has financially supported the dispossession of the Palestinian people. It maintained a sanctions regime against Iraq that killed half a million children and one million people of all ages, in spite of having evidence that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his WMD after the Gulf War. It invaded Iraq in spite of the fact that, according to the Spanish newspaper La Pais, Saddam Hussein had offered to go into exile, hold free elections, and open the country to weapons inspections Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked under Colin Powell in the State Department, has said that Cheney knew many people held in Guantanmo were innocent and that he didn't want to release them because it would undermine the effort to sell the "War on Terror" to the American people. The indefinite detention under harsh conditions of people known to be innocent is yet another crime against Arab and Muslim people.
Also by way of background, let me state that I don't believe Muslims as individuals are more prone to violence than other people. In fact, the Muslims I know in the U.S. are rather shocked by the high rate of crime and violence here in the U.S.
Nevertheless, as a woman, I strongly object to the position of women in the Muslim world. At the Islamic Center, I was in a meeting hall and not the mosque itself and I was attending a political meeting and not a religious service. Even so, men and women were seated separately with the women seated--where else?--in the back. When extra men arrived, I and the other women in my row were asked to move our seats back to accommodate more chairs in the men's section. When yet other men arrived late, we women who were on time were asked to leave our seats to make room for the men in spite of the fact that there were six empty seats in front of us and if there were more than six men, the extra men could have simply pulled an empty seat three feet into the men's section. When my mother hesitated to move, a man came over to us and shooed us out of our seats.
Remember, this was not a religious service and they were trying to get money from us for a fundraiser.
The response most people give me is that when you are in other people's space, you have to follow their rules. This is true and I will never put myself in that space again.
If you are thinking that being asked to change seats is not that important, I would agree. My problem is that this minor issue was only a marker for a deep-seated attitude toward women. The men in the Islamic Center were willing to inconvenience women who had arrived on time and were already seated rather than ask the late-comers who were not yet seated to drag a chair three feet. In other words, women were expected to defer to men rather than ask men to inconvenience themselves in any way.
The rationale given for practices like this is usually "modesty" or something similar. Yet, I can't help but notice--and I have observed this in Orthodox synagogues also--that men feel perfectly free to encroach on the women's space but women can't enter the men's space. This reinforces the feeling that separate is not truly equal. This is the grown up equivalent of the clubhouse with the sign saying, "No Girls Allowed."
This attitude toward women has other, more serious consequences. When I was in my mid-twenties, I toured Europe and spent some time in France. The sexual harassment I encountered at the hands of Muslim men was incredible. Twice, I had North African men actually grab me and try to drag me down the street. When I struggled to get away, they held on tighter. They seemed to have no idea that they were doing something wrong. I encountered less extreme but still bothersome sexual harassment every day I was there. The harassers were always North Africans and never Frenchman. In Germany, I experienced the same thing. The last time I was sexually harassed in the U.S., a man with a Middle Eastern accent followed me in his car and tried to pick me up. When I shook my fist at him in warning, he responded by asking "Is that a 'yes'?"
Obviously, lots of non-Muslim men are sexual harassers and most Muslim men are not, but the combination of traditional attitudes toward women and the isolation and alienation experienced by Muslim immigrants seems to make their form of sexual harassment more pervasive and more aggressive.
I can't help but wonder what will happen to the position of women if Muslims become 10% of the population instead of 2%. Will there be separate seating on buses, as there is in the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel? What will happen in the military and in fire stations where men and women often live and work closely together? How will we work out the conflict between equal employment and "modesty"? What if a group of Muslim men enters a movie theater and can't find enough seats together? Will I be asked to move to accommodate them? Reportedly, men in Saudi Arabia feel perfectly free to step ahead of women in line. Will that happen here?
As politically sympathetic as I am to Arabs and Muslims, I am not sympathetic to this aspect of Middle Eastern culture that believes women should defer to men at all times and I hope that when Muslims become a larger percentage of the American population that they don't bring try to impose these customs on non-Muslim Americans.
By way of background, let me state that I believe the U.S. treatment of Arab and Muslim peoples is criminal. The United States has financially supported the dispossession of the Palestinian people. It maintained a sanctions regime against Iraq that killed half a million children and one million people of all ages, in spite of having evidence that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his WMD after the Gulf War. It invaded Iraq in spite of the fact that, according to the Spanish newspaper La Pais, Saddam Hussein had offered to go into exile, hold free elections, and open the country to weapons inspections Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked under Colin Powell in the State Department, has said that Cheney knew many people held in Guantanmo were innocent and that he didn't want to release them because it would undermine the effort to sell the "War on Terror" to the American people. The indefinite detention under harsh conditions of people known to be innocent is yet another crime against Arab and Muslim people.
Also by way of background, let me state that I don't believe Muslims as individuals are more prone to violence than other people. In fact, the Muslims I know in the U.S. are rather shocked by the high rate of crime and violence here in the U.S.
Nevertheless, as a woman, I strongly object to the position of women in the Muslim world. At the Islamic Center, I was in a meeting hall and not the mosque itself and I was attending a political meeting and not a religious service. Even so, men and women were seated separately with the women seated--where else?--in the back. When extra men arrived, I and the other women in my row were asked to move our seats back to accommodate more chairs in the men's section. When yet other men arrived late, we women who were on time were asked to leave our seats to make room for the men in spite of the fact that there were six empty seats in front of us and if there were more than six men, the extra men could have simply pulled an empty seat three feet into the men's section. When my mother hesitated to move, a man came over to us and shooed us out of our seats.
Remember, this was not a religious service and they were trying to get money from us for a fundraiser.
The response most people give me is that when you are in other people's space, you have to follow their rules. This is true and I will never put myself in that space again.
If you are thinking that being asked to change seats is not that important, I would agree. My problem is that this minor issue was only a marker for a deep-seated attitude toward women. The men in the Islamic Center were willing to inconvenience women who had arrived on time and were already seated rather than ask the late-comers who were not yet seated to drag a chair three feet. In other words, women were expected to defer to men rather than ask men to inconvenience themselves in any way.
The rationale given for practices like this is usually "modesty" or something similar. Yet, I can't help but notice--and I have observed this in Orthodox synagogues also--that men feel perfectly free to encroach on the women's space but women can't enter the men's space. This reinforces the feeling that separate is not truly equal. This is the grown up equivalent of the clubhouse with the sign saying, "No Girls Allowed."
This attitude toward women has other, more serious consequences. When I was in my mid-twenties, I toured Europe and spent some time in France. The sexual harassment I encountered at the hands of Muslim men was incredible. Twice, I had North African men actually grab me and try to drag me down the street. When I struggled to get away, they held on tighter. They seemed to have no idea that they were doing something wrong. I encountered less extreme but still bothersome sexual harassment every day I was there. The harassers were always North Africans and never Frenchman. In Germany, I experienced the same thing. The last time I was sexually harassed in the U.S., a man with a Middle Eastern accent followed me in his car and tried to pick me up. When I shook my fist at him in warning, he responded by asking "Is that a 'yes'?"
Obviously, lots of non-Muslim men are sexual harassers and most Muslim men are not, but the combination of traditional attitudes toward women and the isolation and alienation experienced by Muslim immigrants seems to make their form of sexual harassment more pervasive and more aggressive.
I can't help but wonder what will happen to the position of women if Muslims become 10% of the population instead of 2%. Will there be separate seating on buses, as there is in the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel? What will happen in the military and in fire stations where men and women often live and work closely together? How will we work out the conflict between equal employment and "modesty"? What if a group of Muslim men enters a movie theater and can't find enough seats together? Will I be asked to move to accommodate them? Reportedly, men in Saudi Arabia feel perfectly free to step ahead of women in line. Will that happen here?
As politically sympathetic as I am to Arabs and Muslims, I am not sympathetic to this aspect of Middle Eastern culture that believes women should defer to men at all times and I hope that when Muslims become a larger percentage of the American population that they don't bring try to impose these customs on non-Muslim Americans.
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