A Cult to Masculinity

After saying that Islam is a cult of masculinity, Robert Spencer argues that it is a cult to a caricature of masculinity. 

This makes it a cult to machismo. 

One recalls that Michael Carroll, in a book called The Cult to the Virgin Mary, argued that machismo culture developed when men failed to protect and provide for women and children. Having failed to fulfill manly duties, macho men asserted a false sense of masculinity by practicing brutality, especially brutality toward women.

Spencer explains:

Islam in general is a religion for males, and in particular, for sexually avaricious adolescent males. Islam is a cult of masculinity, and in this, its appeal is very much like that of National Socialism. Both indulge in a kind of idolatry of masculinity, confusing genuine masculine strength with brutality, bloodlust, domination, and the exaltation of violence and brute force. This is why both National Socialism and Islamic jihad groups such as Hamas often attract weak men who are overcompensating for their lack of real masculinity and who often also wish to deny and suppress their homosexual inclinations.

In the Middle East, Israel succeeded in building a first world nation with a thriving economy and a great military. Clearly, Israeli success has shamed Palestinians, to the point where they do not believe that they can compete. Thus, they use their wealth, not to build a nation or an economy, but to destroy what others have built. 

It makes them feel powerful. 

Their actions on October 7 showed an effort to compensate for failure, not by succeeding, but by brutality. Spenser declares that the strength they feel is spurious-- it is false strength and accompanies false pride-- that is, bloated self-esteem.

Converts to Islam in the West (generally as opposed to men who grow up in Islamic cultures) and sons of immigrant Muslims who become deeply committed to their faith over here often tend to be frustrated and angry young men who are attracted to the spurious sense of superiority and strength that Islam offers them as well as insecure half-men who can't get a woman other than through force or by making a deal with her father.

Obviously, this is not limited to Islam. Spencer cites the case of one Andrew Tate, an American-British  kickboxer who has promoted a caricatured view of masculinity, and who has been charged with sex trafficking and rape. 

He has recently converted to Islam:

… the spurious masculinity that jihad offers is especially appealing in our age of weak, feminized men. When the West was culturally strong, converts to Islam were virtually unheard of, but in this age of emasculation, they’ve become common among a certain type of men. Kickboxer Andrew Tate, who has a comically debased view of masculinity and women that has entangled him in sex trafficking and rape charges, is also a convert to Islam. Homosexual or not, Tate is a classic Röhm-like figure, embracing a harsh caricature of masculinity that scarcely conceals a hatred (and likely fear) of women.

As America’s college campuses are overrun with anti-Semitism, might it be the case that the emasculated males who bow down to strong, empowered women are compensating for their own weakness? 

Recall that the advent of medieval cults to the Virgin Mary correlates with the crusades. Therein the male population trooped off to the Holy Land to recover, among other things, the foreskin of Jesus, leaving their properties in control of their wives. (And No, I did not make that up.)

Empowered women set about to seduce the young males who remained behind, creating a seduction ritual called courtly love. It is the foundation for what used to be called courtship.

As for the Hamas terrorists, they were and remain cowards. Rather than compete on a battlefield or even a marketplace against men, according to the rules set down by a male ethos, they attack and brutalize women and children, in violation of the rules of warfare.  

As I mentioned, this makes them cowards, people who can pretend to be strong while throwing babies in ovens but who cry out to be rescued when they are dealing with a real army.

Manliness involves playing by the rules. If you break the rules, you are not winning. You are pretending to be above the rules, and even above considerations of mere humanity.

As noted in previous posts, Hamas fighters consider themselves to be superhuman, to be godlike in their ability to cause their enemies to suffer. Theirs is a pagan cult, the kind that existed in Egypt during the time of Moses. Didn’t Moses lead his people to Judea, i.e. Israel, in order to escape from polytheistic Egypt and to establish the world’s first monotheistic culture?

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