There is something very strange going on here. I think that it’s probably a result of the increasing secularization of British (and European) society, in which the traditional religions have made themselves increasingly irrelevant.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mohammed (in its various spellings) is now the most popular boy’s name in Britain.
Uh oh.
They all seem like the same shallow people, highly susceptible to peer pressure, who have always found comfort in religion and being told exactly what to do and think.
In the 60’s they’d have joined a commune.
I’m giong to suggest it has less to do with the decline of the Church of England, which was well advanced two centuries ago, and more to do with the more recent decline of English manhood.
One of the converts expresses it herself: Despite my lifestyle, I felt empty inside.
There you go. We can blame the increasing hordes of feckless metrosexual Englishmen who lack the stiff-upper-thinginess of their forefather’s.
The Stockholm Syndrome? Perhaps these women’s brains interpret Islam as the signal of an emerging tribe of dominant males.
There’s a reason the real religions of the world have passed the test of time and have lasted (and grown) for millenia. They meet deep, inescapable needs in the human psyche. People need guidance, and the sense of belonging to something greater than themselves. Commitment to a service.
Modern Western society does not provide that. It’s all about “rights” and “freedoms”, and not about duties or self-imposed restrictions. But the most successful religions emphasize duties and restrictions for a reason – people want them.
This story is mostly about the abject failure of the Church of England to provide any sort of religious guidance to its flock. It has embraced Leftism wholly and completely, and so anyone looking for a religion must look elsewhere.
I notice however that this is a “cafeteria Islam”, where the women pick and choose which aspects of Islam to accept into their lives. From the story:
Emphasis added.
One wonders how much of their “conversion” is a true commitment to a faith, and how much of it is the desire to join a social club as long as it’s not too inconvenient. Regardless, I doubt this is a sign of stonings and honor killings coming to Europe (at least within the white community).
Carl,
I don’t disagree that modern Englishmen are a sad lot, but this is completely the fault of the Western churches and culture. Not everyone perhaps, but most people need a religion to feel complete and happy inside.
What these women are rejecting are the “victories” of Leftism/Marxism/Feminism, which never sought to “empower” women but instead merely sought to make them into cogs in the male-only machine. Well guess what, many women don’t want to be cogs in the machine. They don’t want to lead a hard drinking, purposeless existence. They want to be women, devoted to a family, and Islamic culture isn’t afraid to impose these gender roles.
And is this the common Englishmen’s fault? I don’t think so. Think of the laws passed in Britain these decades under Lefting government, and the harm its done to men. A man cannot defend his home or family from invaders? A man does not have rights to his children in the event of divorce? Flirting with a woman is grounds for a lawsuit? Can you think of anything more emasculating than these policies? I cannot.
Being a man has been outlawed, and only the outlaws are men. Can there be any mystery why Muslims and members of the chav culture don’t lack for girlfriends?
I think of it in terms of ecology. Nuke out a beneficial species that’s a minor annoyance and sooner or later something more aggressive and harder to kill will move in to fill the vacuum.
In Europe’s case the leftists went out and actively brought in the theological version of fire ants. Radical Islam has it’s roots in the decline of Christian culture in the West. Considering how flaccid the multiculturalism that has replaced it is, I’d say “Buy Muslim”.
Carl’s got it pegged.
If you’re looking for companions who are unyielding and supremely confident in the righteousness of their lives’ efforts and convictions, you’re going to have a hard time finding anyone in Europe outside Geert Wilders and Christopher Hitchens that isn’t part of the Muslim horde.
And besides, Islam and its followers must be right, because the whole world is kowtowing to them. All the world’s feeble efforts have not slowed the Islamic tsunami one iota. It has accelerated… Those that do make an effort to push back are torn at by their own countrymen. Better to convert now and sit higher in the slave heirarchy than those that are forced to convert later.
About 5,000 Germans convert to Islam each year as well. That number does not appear to be increasing at all. I suspect the media is making more out of a similarly marginal phenomenon in the U.K. At a rate of 5,000 converts per year, it would take a 100 years for even half a million to convert to Islam. This is a very marginal trend.
Cart before the horse, Brock. The culture reflects the choices of the people, not vice versa, I think. I would attribute the decline of the virility (double entendre intended) of English traditional male culture — whether in the chapel or in the pub — to the mass resignation of Englishmen from the traditional duties of men. They allowed themselves to be emasculated. Voted for it, clearly. It wasn’t just the bints.
Now why that happened, I do not know. Maybe it’s as simple as genetic harrowing. Quite a lot of those most responsive to the traditional values went over the top at Ypres and the Somme: about 1 of every 15 military age British men died young on the Continent in 1918. That’s a hell of a lot of selection over who breeds and who doesn’t.
Or maybe it was just the VIctorian/Edwardian hypermasculine impulse exhausting itself. It’s hard, reading history, not to feel that cultures sometimes do exhibit boom ‘n’ bust cycles of stereotypically testosterone-soaked behaviour.
Anyway, let me parenthetically reject the association of any true feminism with the soul-killing asexual roboticism of the Marxists and Stalinists. I suggest a true champion of women prizes men qua men, and neither seeks to effeminize them nor morph into them. I don’t deny that elements of feminism, the political movement, were hijacked by the Stalinists. But you know they do that to any idealistic movement. Look how they’ve co-opted and betrayed young people, again and again.
Meh, the name thing is irrelevant.
Devout Muslims in a non-Muslim area tend to pick assertively-Muslim names. Mohammed is about the strongest you can get in terms of asserting Islam.
However, the masses of the English (and non-Muslim immigrants!) have a giant variety of traditional names that they like, thus spreading their picks out over a much larger area.
It’s not indicative of a whole lot – especially since it only beat out Oliver by 180 names in the whole of Great Britain in an entire year.
(That also explains the absence of any non-Mohammed non-traditional names in the top ten; there’s not nearly the signaling effect of Mohammed.)
We also need to look at the success of other evangelical religions in the area. For example, I understand Mormons and Scientologists are doing well in Europe too. My take is that any stagnant rotting religion will lose people to other religions. Religions fill needs: security and comfort, belonging and certainty, and having a family. When those needs aren’t met, people move on to religions that do satisfy those needs.
So Karl, are atheists just higher up on the pyramid of this heirarchy of needs?
Very interesting that the converts in the Daily Mail article based their decisions on various existential felt needs, but not one of them talked about Islam being, um…true. Not one of them talked about the legitimacy of Mohammed as a divine prophet or the Quran as divine revelation. All of the introspection about religion-less life being “empty” cannot legitimize Islam. Instead of asking what is true, they ask what makes them feel fulfilled. It is totally irrational therapeutic deism. And I say this as a Christian who is certainly not adverse to feeling fulfilled, but it is simply backwards to make life-governing decisions on this basis.
Carl was write in his comment above, that the Church of England’s failure is not the *immediate* catalyst of these Islamic conversions. That church has been a bastion of nominalistic Christianity and theological liberalism (along with cultural and political liberalism) for quite a some time now, complete with ritualistic costume parties every Sunday morning. But the vacuum that it left behind was more recently filled with a combination of secular hedonism (sexual promiscuity, binge drinking, football hooliganism) on one hand, and on the other hand there was a brand of flaky, brainless “spirituality” that was nothing more than a shallow hodgepodge of half-adopted, bastardized eastern religions that required no particular commitements or principles and childish superstitions like astrology. We can thank the ’60s generation for all of that, not the Church of England. Now that all of that has run its course and shown itself to be bankrupt to many in the current generation, Islam is looking like a pretty good alternative. In many respects, rightfully so.
One small problem, though. Islam is a lie.
Carl,
On the contrary, I believe it is you who have put the cart before the horse. What’s the cause, and what’s the effect, eh?
I don’t believe that there has been a significant genetic shift in the English makeup in just the last century. That’s incredibly unlikely, and not necessary. It’s easy to see among the English colonies that culture, rather than gentetics, is the controlling factor here.
Did they? I disagree. Women did. During your hypermasculine Victorian/Edwardian period, who were the voters? Men. And then women went from “nada” to majority in England in 1928. Since then the State has been legislated into a husband surrogate, providing guaranteed income and provision for children, protection from the police, and so on. Meanwhile men have been actively restrained from doing some of these things in any “private capacity.”
It only takes most women plus a small number of misguided men (whether true believer Marxists, over-educated “-studies” students, or pathetic Betas seeking to curry favor from the women-folk they are incapable of earning in traditional mating practice) to tip the scales of our elections. And so today we have “no fault alimony” plus loss of children for fathers, all in the name of “fairness.”
Is it any wonder men have dropped out of even pretending to fulfill masculine roles? It’s no mystery to me. Kick a dog often enough and even the dumbest will learn.
Well, fine then. I will limit my criticism solely to feminism as it actually exists, and I promise to leave your fantastic vision of “true” feminism undisturbed. I’ve never seen such a feminism in the wild, but perhaps isolated pockets of it exist somewhere. It’s a nice thought anyway.
So Karl, are atheists just higher up on the pyramid of this heirarchy of needs?
Not everyone needs an explicit celestial babysitter, I guess. Still it looks to me like a lot of people who don’t go that route find substitutes (for example, environmentalism and New Age).
Or Science… not science… Science.
Brock,
I think Carl’s no-true Scotsman fallacy was his point. You are entirely correct that the true feminist that Carl describes does not exist within the ‘feminist’ movement, and he recognizes that (the only outspoken female I can think of that would embody his comment was Ayn Rand). I think it was a comment on the co-opting of language by the ‘feminist’ movement to give themselves a more empowering sounding name (even if it doesn’t properly fit). ‘I’m an Androgynist’ vrs. ‘I’m a feminist’ doesn’t evoke the same righteous militant sisterhood solidarity. it-hood?
Wendy McElroy and Tammy Bruce to name a few contemporary outspoken ones off the top of my head.
On behalf of British men:
http://blog.wfmu.org/photos/uncategorized/hoolikid_79.jpg
and of course, also:
http://images.google.com/images?q=british+in+afghanistan
Well…let’s see, Brock. First, I always consider the biological and the psychological long before I attribute stuff to “culture.” Honestly, I think “culture” is a fairly weak cause for nearly anything. Few important and intimate decisions we make are driven by “culture.” We marry a given person for very personal reasons — she smells great! — and not because we’ve been “trained” by seeing Twiggy or Barbara Stanwyck on the TV. I’m deeply skeptical of those “Cultural Studies” conclusions that see us as all as brainwashed cogs that do what Big Oil/Big Biz/Big Advertising/Video Games/Soap Operas/Talk Radio/Bogeyman Du Jour says we should do.
So….yeah, I’m inclined to think, in the absence of contrary evidence, that what people individually think and feel, for private and personal reasons, always trumps what they overhear at the pub, see on the telly, or read about in the papers.
Plus, I’m far removed from Engilsh daily life, but I don’t get the impression that there was any rear-guard action going on here — as there surely would have been had it been a top-down culture-imposed shift. I mean, look at the blowback Team Obama is getting for trying to make a much milder shift in American culture. People naturally resist cutulral shifts if those shifts conflict with their personal feelings and goals. Not seeing the resistance in England, I’m inclinded to think the cultural shift reflected rather than caused a shift in personal decisions and values.
I already agreed I am a bit mystified by why this emasculation took place, so I am not particularly attached to any of the hypotheses I advanced. I don’t quite agree that there has been no natural selection. I think if the Great War snuffed the 7% of young British men most dedicated to VIctorian values, and embitters a good 20% of the rest, say, that easily may have a big effect. Remember, these may be the leaders about whom we’re talking. If you decimate an army, choosing in particular the best and most capable officers — what happens to the army? To morale, competence, the will to fight on? I don’t think we should neglect this.
But I think you’re also right to look at the enormous influence of the accession of female suffrage in the 1920s. Without doubt, that has changed things, and very probably along the lines you somewhat bitterly suggest. A sad and unhappy outcome. I do suggest one avoids blaming women voters too much. As I said, it’s not just women that have done this: men have done it to themselves, too. Keep in mind your argument about it only takes the women plus a few misguided men to form a majority works the other way, too. It only takes the men plus a few wise women to form a majority the other way. Who is more to blame? Those who voted ugly in, or those who failed to defeat ugly when it popped up on the ballot?
Perhaps it’s most fair to say that there has been a grievious breakdown in mutual understanding, respect, and common purpose between the sexes this last century or so, actively assisted by Stalinists and opportunist scum of both sexes. Deals with the devil were made on both sides. I’m sure you must know of at least a few young men who were (and are) more than happy to take the free sex and diminished self-respect in exchange for not having to shoulder the burden of supporting a family. It’s not just a question of the dog being kicked over and over again (although I quite agree that’s happened). The dog in some cases found it easier to whine and lick boots for his tasty pre-cooked supper than snarl at the collar and go out into the rain to hunt some stringy squirrel for himself.
I’ve never seen such a feminism in the wild
Oh say it isn’t so, Brock. Don’t you have a good woman? That’s what I mean, you know. It’s how she acts in her private life that most matters. And there are plenty of stand-up gals, still, who don’t consider themselves second-class in any way whatsoever — but who take pride in and expect honor for their natural feminine superiority, where it exists, and appreciate and honor natural masculine leadership where that exists. Let us not tar with too broad a brush.
If nothing else, we’re certainly both — both sexes — responsible for the dismal state of American parenting and education. And keep in mind that even if only men had voted Obama would stil have won 49-48 in 2008, and Clinton 41-38 in 1992.
You mean the tattered remnants of the Grand Army, bob, retreating in fighting good order from the debacle at Moscow. Indeed, worth a salute.
Let me not overstate my differences with Brock, also. As the father of three sons, I am daily anxious about the evil emasculating dehumanizing prejudicial sexually explosive and unfriendly world they are going into. I cringe at the shit they watch about their sex on the vile tube, and in movies, the utter failure in the school system to nurture most excellent male virtues like daring, courage, enterprise, selflessness, no-excuses discipline, the poisoned narcissism of modern sexual relations that make sex free as the air but agape love rooted in mutual honor as rare as partridges in pear trees.
Too bad, too bad indeed.
who take pride in and expect honor for their natural feminine superiority, where it exists, and appreciate and honor natural masculine leadership where that exists.
I think this is complete baloney. What are you even talking about? Other than some obvious biology involving sexually specific organs, I don’t know what superiority you are talking about.
But in any case, it is irrelevant for two reasons:
1) Feminism simply says that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. What people choose to do with those rights and opportunities is up to them, and I trust that people will recognize leadership and superiority as it ocurrs, if their prejudice doesn’t blind them to it.
2) Somebody is doing traditionally manly things in the UK, like, say, building houses. If some of those carpenters are women, who cares? Plenty of the house builders are men, and even if they agree with your sexist BS, they’d still probably want to kick your ass for what you’re saying about British men.
This tendency for modern women (and men) to convert to Islam (and various other cultures/religions) is to some extent Ludditism by another name. The modern age is very different from our genetic roots, not everyone can handle it on all fronts and some who go hard to do so end up burning out and re-embracing the old ways in an extreme fashion. It is only natural – it tends to be the insecure people who do so.
As to England becoming emasculated – this often seems a complaint of weak men who are threatened by competent women who do not need to pander to their uselessness and egos. Such insecure men are prone to Islam/Ludditism, etc., see above.
Personally I am looking forward to an end to sexual dimorphism – a day when women are just as tall on average as men and women and men are far more evenly matched. Reproduction no longer favors sexual dimorphism and there is no longer a good excuse for women to be physically or personally less capable than men – indeed it is a waste of a person for them to be so. Specialization of the sexes is no longer that required – such specialization is for animals.
What are you even talking about?
Well, for one thing, not whether you build houses or jet airplanes, or teach kindergarten and grow vegetables, Bonobo. As a working analogic model, how about you ponder the psychological and values differences you see in your ideological fellow travelers — men of the left, say — and the knuckle-draggers on the right? Would you reduce those distinctions to things like Democrats choose intellectual jobs, like lawyers, professors and Senators, while Republicans are truck drivers, pimps and bail bondsmen. Or would you look a tad less superficially? As you would with ideology, so would I with sex differences, which I hazard are just a little bit more primeval than your poltical affiliation.
Other than some obvious biology involving sexually specific organs, I don’t know what superiority you are talking about.
You Democrats. Always with your mind in the crotch. And yet the coupling apparatus is about the least important distinction between how men and women think, or what their respective strengths and weaknesses are, both physicall and intellectually.
Here are some distinctions for you to ponder, Bob:
(1) Men are physically stronger and more initially decisive. Women have more tolerance of ambiguity and have better physical endurance.
(2) The IQ distribution for men is flatter and wider than for women, meaning that among both the very smart and the very dumb there are more men than women, and among people of near average intelligence women outnumber men.
(3) Women process speech on both sides of their brain, in what seems to be a “pure speech” center and a “tonal” center also associated with music comprehension. It may be therefore that women tend to be faster and better at interpreting nonverbal communication. Men only use Broca’s area. Men are also more likely to be left-handed, and if you believe the bicameral mind stuff, are in general more “left brained” than women.
(4) Men are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, women with depression.
Now do you suppose these differences exactly cancel out, so that men and women are, on average, exactly as motivated and competent at every conceivable duty or pleasure human beings undertake? Tee hee.
Feminism simply says that men and women should have equal rights and opportunitie
Oh heavens no, Bob. Not at all. It says many other things besides that, not all of which are self-consistent. And I don’t even know whre you’d find any broad general agreement on what “feminism” is and who speaks for it. You want to explain affirmative action and the prejudices of divorce or criminal court, by the way, while you’ve got that nothin’ but equal opportunities sentence resonating in your head? Democrats always needs regular practise squaring circles, proving black is white, freedom is slavery, et cetera.
they’d still probably want to kick your ass for what you’re saying about British men
Gosh, that’s persuasive. Probably not in the way you meant it, however. I refer you to a well-known quote from the good Doctor, channeling Johnson.
Have some feces, Bonobob. Fling! Whoop!
I read part way through the article and got bored when I came to the part about how the woman convert (Tony Blair’s sis-in-law) converted because of this wonderful feeling she got in some building in Iran. And how she’d been “involved” in the Palestinian community for years — and what the frack she was doing in Iran in the first place, what kind of woman goes there for fun… And I could predict the rest of it. It’s just like all those shallow, frivolous, needy women who can’t stand to be alone because the emptiness in their heads makes a scary echo, who joined cults and communes and any stupid religion or other gathering with lots of stuff to do and all kinds of rituals and rules and costumes to make you feel like you’re doing something important and you don’t have to struggle to come up with your own personality or goals because there’s a role already made for you. It’s all about their feelings and emotions; reason, “deep-thinking” are not there, despite what the perplexed ex-Muslim article writer says. It’s always “spiritual fulfillment” (feeling good in some vague sort of way) and how nice all the other Muslims are to her and “community” and bullshit like that. Women like this usually are just bored with their family and own culture because they are used to it but not smart enough to appreciate it.
I have a very hard attitude towards Western converts to Islam, and a short and very ugly word for them. And I don’t give a flying frack why they converted. (Well, cheesy sci-fi shows are good for something! 🙂 )
The word? Traitors.
Hi Carl,
Your list of the possible differences between men and women is interesting. Would you be interested in connecting the dots for me, if it isn’t too much trouble, between
dot 1: that list (and any other items you want to add to it)
dot 2; the idea that men in the UK have somehow been netuered, and
dot 3: the interest British career women might have in converting to Islam?
If it is too much bother, don’t worry about it. I have very little time to write anything this week, and the same might be true of you. I really have enjoyed our recent exchanges, and I really regret that I can’t keep up with you.
I did see this link, which some of you might enjoy — it is written by a Muslim feminist who asserts that human rights and Islam are not incompatible:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/3393/the_“f”_word%3A_feminism_in_islam__
Re: British Manhood.
Why do I see an image of Mark Steyn straddling Canada, England, Australia, and all the Anglosphere in between with dancing Uighurs in Bermuda fawning over his awesome manhood, as the rest of British mandom stares off into the sky amongst flowers on green grassy hills?
On a serious note, I think the issue here is vanity. You have vain women empty from vain lives, seeking a quick and vain spiritual solution.
Islam, and I won’t comment on the religion specifically, is the subject of massive popular and media attention (that’s what happen when thousands of lives are publicly snuffed).
I mean, is this too different from Jane Fonda in Hanoi? Really?
bob, dot 1 is unconnected to dot 2, and I don’t know why you think it should be. Brock connected dot 2 to dot 3 well enough already. The short version is Osama bin Laden’s (somewhat mistaken, as it turns out) comment about the United States: people prefer the strong horse.
I should add there’s nothing special about Britain here. I think the same thing has happened in the United States, and indeed in almost all Western republics, although the process is more or less advanced in various nations.