Muslims and Westerners: The Psychological Differences

by Nicolai Sennels (May 2010)

 
[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.

 

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.

 

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Background

 

 

I was met with strong criticism from all sides and no support at all!

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).

 

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 

 

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 

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.” 

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 differentMuslim 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:

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.

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.

Consequences of failed integration?

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.

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. 

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.

 

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Nicolai Sennels can be contacted at: [email protected].

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