No, the Military Doesn't 'Ground' People

And neither does religion, for that matter...

A lengthy article originally appearing in the New York Times catalogs the aimless, careening life of one Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who murdered or injured dozens of revelers in New Orleans on New Year's.

Titled, "'I Joined ISIS': The New Orleans Attacker's Secret Radicalization," the piece reminds me of something Ayn Rand once said: "The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see."

Why?

In large part, it's because the story, like so many others, half-pretends that Islam is above reproach as a motivator for acts carried out in its name. But there's also a puzzling apparent bafflement about the time course of Jabbar's life, along the lines of How did someone who had his act together at one point go off the deep end like this? ("Days later, investigators were still trying to trace exactly how Mr. Jabbar had managed to descend into such a murderous state without detection.")

By my reading, this is the story of someone who never really got his act together, at least in the sense of developing a rational hierarchy of values directed at furthering his life as a human being: At his best, he'd absorbed some sense of order and routine from a military environment, but since this was not integrated into a broader context of knowledge and values, it didn't stick or grow.

Over the course of his life, Jabbar, who had what "seemed to be a relatively ordinary upbringing":

1. Partied too much in college, losing his scholarship.
2. Apparently did well in the structured confines of a stint in the military.
3. Showed increasing interest in Islam during his second time in college. [This showed a desire on his part to ground what he'd learned in the military. -- ed]
4. Got through college on his second attempt, and landed a white-collar job.
5. Had trouble in business.
6. Got divorced three times.
7. Got in trouble for harassing his third wife and the son from that marriage.
8. Began acting erratically-enough that a previous spouse and her new husband had to move to limit his contact with their children.
9. Began adopting a more traditional Islamic appearance and criticizing others for music, drinking, and partying, which he said were "made forbidden to us."
10. Murdered and injured dozens in the name of Islam in New Orleans.

This is not the picture of someone who has ever developed rational values or learned self-direction. It is at best, a tragic example of someone who saw a need for guidance in his life and was led astray.

The story reminds me very much of other aimless Westerners who became jihadists, such as "Jihad Jack" and John Walker Lindh.

At Capitalism Magazine, Carl Bradley, considers whether there really is any difference between the sort of anything goes mentality common in modern, leftist-influenced Western culture and that of a religious fanatic:

It is only on the surface, however, that the dogmatist is opposed to the subjectivist; at root, the two share a fundamental similarity. In denying that there are any objective standards by which to choose how to think or act, the subjectivist makes clear that his choices are ruled by blind feelings. This is precisely also the basic policy of the religious dogmatist.

There are an infinite number of opposing religious sects. How does the religionist decide which faith to embrace, which revelations to follow and which authority to obey?...

Bradley later notes: "[T]he paradoxical conversions of Jack Thomas and Walker Lindh -- from subjectivist to religious dogmatist -- aren't so paradoxical after all; in both cases, the switch was merely from one form of emotionalism to another."

You might object: But Gus, Jabbar's dad was nominally Moslem.

That's true, but Jabbar didn't really look to religion until later, so his story still pretty well matches up with these others, especially since they all then ended up Moslem.

Yeah, but millions of Moslems don't commit such acts.

True, but that hardly excuses Islam, especially since most terrorists are, in fact, Moslem. Indeed, another piece at Capitalism Magazine, by Warren Ross asks and answers the very question, "Is Islam at Fault?" [This piece is truncated. Archived complete versions can be found here and here. -- ed]

Ross -- after exploring religion in general and Islam in particular -- concludes in part:

Whatever doctrines Islam shares with the other major religions, it is clear that it has distinctive views that add a powerful incentive and doctrinal justification for mass murder. All religions have in them the philosophical premises which could lead to terror, but not all have supporting doctrines and traditions that make terror a likelihood. This status is unique to Islam. Nonetheless, the really important point about what is distinctive to Islam is the first one - its serious religiousness. All secondary attributes are dispensable in explaining terror, but Islam's serious adherence to the four primary philosophical premises of religion, and its implementation of those premises in practice, would lead to such terrorism even if there had been no tradition of war. Hatred of the West, for example, is not an isolated premise unrelated to the four primary premises. Hatred of the West is a consequence of the fact that the secular West thoroughly rejects such views (notwithstanding the remnants of a more religious past).

Life is too complicated for most people to live successfully without learning some form of guidance from others.

That guidance often unfortunately comes from religion and consists of rote orders, but that is not the only possibility, as Ayn Rand once noted, in answer to the question, Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?:

Qua religion, no -- in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man's life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very -- how should I say it? -- dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.

As for the best alternative to religion, Ayn Rand can speak for herself far better than I can speak for her.

-- CAV