Sunday 18 March 2007

Pic of the day: A lone hero, surrounded by enemies in a wild land - it's stabbity time! (Screenshot: Oblivion, appropriately enough.)

Why Muslims stab Norwegians

This is not about terrorists. We don't currently have a terrorism problem here in Norway, and it is unlikely to take the form of stabbing anyway. What we do have is a problem with immigrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa, who suddenly go crazy and stab random bystanders with knives, often killing them. This has become so common that by now you have to mention explicitly if the perpetrator was not a Muslim.

Why does this happen? I can think of two explanations, and I believe one of them to be far more important than the other.

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The first and perhaps most obvious explanation is stereotyping. The public debate here in Norway frequently paints Muslims as rabid, bloodthirsty murderers. Admittedly, this is mostly about terrorism or war. But as the Muslims live here long enough to learn some of the language, they might start identifying with the stereotypes. And even before that, the way people look at them and move away from them is a pretty good hint of negative expectations. And we all have a tendency, at least subconsciously, to try to fulfill expectations.

The reason why I don't think this is the main cause of the murders, is that it doesn't work on all cultural groups. The public debate in Norway also tends to stereotype Jews as a baby-killing Nazis, but there is no record of Norwegian Jews living up to this stereotype. I believe this is because Jewish culture is inherently more introspective than ours, while the opposite is true for most Muslim nations. Anthropologists refer to "guilt-based" and "shame-based" cultures. Jewish culture is generally considered the pinnacle of guilt-based, with our own Protestant culture in second place. On the other end of the scale, East Asian cultures are generally shame-based, most Islamic cultures somewhat less so, followed by Mediterranean and Latin American countries. Being as most anthropologists through history have been West Europeans or North Americans, shame-based cultures are generally seen as slightly inferior or less developed than our own. This can certainly be debated, given for instance the low crime rates in Japan; but in this particular case it might make a difference.

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What I really believe happens is that these knife wielding immigrants suffer from panic or anxiety disorders. In almost every case they claim to have left their homeland because of persecution. It so happens that persecution is not uncommon in these countries, which is probably why they have been allowed to stay as long as they have. It may even be that they have encountered real adversity: Having an anxiety disorder is no guarantee against persecution, after all! But then they come to Norway, where things are a lot more peaceful and basic needs are easily filled. And the fear doesn't stop.

Panic and anxiety are quite common here, but we think of them as illnesses that should be treated with medication or cognitive therapy. Not so for the middle and lower classes in less developed countries, and particularly not those woven through with oppression and violence. The natural assumption for them is that if they are afraid, people really are out to get them. It takes a lot less psychosis for them to see paranoia as reasonable, because paranoia is reasonable where they come from.

And so they crack and the crazy spills out, followed by the blood of innocents. It is not because their religion commands them to kill infidels or anything. (In fact, Islam encourages the Muslim to protect the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, though this is probably downplayed by the more fundamentalist preachers these days.) The real problem, however, is that they come from a culture where there is less focus on mental health and more focus on dealing with actual external enemies. So their "mind parasites" (to use the wonderful phrase by Robert W. Godwin) hide in plain sight by projecting on the people around them. The complexes whisper in their ears day and night: "We hate you, we want you to suffer and die! Hate you, hate you, hate you!" But the patients, unable to look inward in their own psyche, think that these thoughts come from the people around them. And when they can't take it any longer, they strike back.

If anything, this kind of feelings is probably more common in these cultures, because the standards of child rearing there lag behind ours to a shocking degree. What is normal treatment of children in much of the Middle East would be considered child abuse here in Scandinavia. So most likely it is the hate and scorn of their own parents they fear, as also happens even here. But with a medieval psychology there is really no way for them to know this and take action before it is too late.

Or that's how I see it today. How about you?