In the name of Allah, the Merciful to all, the Compassionate

I came across a bit of news today about Public Safety Canada awarding a $170K grant to Australian academic Scott Flower. The title of the article was kind of misleading, as it claims Prof. Flower was tasked with discovering why Canadians are choosing Islam. But the official title of the project says the task was how to find people prone to extremism among reverts. Here is the brief of that project:

Towards understanding the extremely rare: distinguishing ordinary processes of religious conversion from violent extremism (Dr. Scott Flower)

This research project is designed to inform research, government and public perception about recent examples in the West where Muslim converts are disproportionately represented in acts of Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism. Importantly, the research aims to counter misperceptions driven by claims of direct connection between processes of religious conversion and radicalization leading to violence, which can lead to stereotyping entire groups of people as security threats based on religious choice. Processes of radicalization leading to violence are rare and highly specific to individuals and to context, while general processes of religious conversion commonly lead to positive outcomes such as self-esteem and sense of belonging. In this context, this project will focus on establishing the contextual factors and baselines against which to understand the rare cases of extremist violence in the name of a religion, to be able to distinguish what matters from what does not. The Department will provide a contribution of $169,240 over two years.

What a waste of time and money to find an answer to such a simple question.

Sam Metwally, the imam of Canada’s Ottawa Mosque, told CBC News that he witnessed a spike in the number of conversions after the deadly shootings outside the Canadian parliament on Oct. 22, 2014. What worried him is that the new converts are not returning back to the mosques for further education about Islam.

If people who receive further education about Islam had higher tendencies towards violent acts, one could conclude that there is a correlation between Islamic beliefs and violence. But that’s absolutely not the case.

People with a tendency to extremism are not sophisticated individuals. They are ordinary people who simply want to be somebody, and western culture has nothing to offer them. It shuts every possible way for ordinary people to reach new heights, in a meaningful way.

In Western culture if you want to be a hero, you have to do something stupid or crazy.

Once upon a time there was a Cancer patient who ran across Canada before his imminent death, and Canada made a hero of him. Nowadays, every school kid in Canada has to celebrate his achievements every year. Why should an educated and balanced person even think of imitating such an act? Canadian society encourages stupidity by means of recognition. Just look at Frankie MacDonald, who was recognized in parliament for his weather reports!

What’s wrong with superheroes in movies?

There are around 600 superhero movies in theatres each year. Let’s take a look at some of their qualifications:

  • Superman: an alien born on another planet, can pass through a mountain without getting a single bruise, and shoot lasers from his eyes
  • Batman: is a filthy rich boy who has a multimillion-dollar car, a state-of-the-art cape that lets him fly, and expensive surveillance technology
  • Iron-man: inherited his money, and has tons of spare time and lots of fun hobbies
  • X-Men mutants: are collectively a hated minority, cast out from society just because they are different
  • Captain America:  is an unfrozen science experiment from 1942
  • Harry Potter: was born with wizard genes
  • Mr. Incredible: has superhuman strength – he uses a train for his daily weight-lifting workout

All these movies try to imply is if you don’t have a fortune or some special genes inherited; do not even think about being somebody.

No matter how fun the fantasies of these superheroes are, when a young educated university graduate leaves cinema, he has to live with the reality that he has to flip burgers at McDonald for the rest of his life.

These superheroes are not personifiable.

All of them are friendless anti-social loners who just work alone. Time and time again, superheroes make the decision to keep everyone else who could help out of the loop. It seems all they want is to tell the audience they are inferior.

People who crave recognition are left with no choice but stupidity.

The Corporatism ruling western countries lose no opportunity to remind people they are just ordinary sheeples who have no choice but to submit to their rules. As long as this is the name of the game, you should expect the rise of anti-social behavior and extremism.