Ghira and the Rage Boy
by Kenneth Roberts



This Should be His Customary Attitude:
His foot should stamp, and his throat should growl,
His hair should twirl, and his face should scowl,
His eyes should flash, and his breast protrude,
And this should be his customary attitude.
-from HMS Pinafore

Most people have seen 'Islamic Rage Boy', also known by his real name as Shakeel Ahmad Bhat of Kashmir.  Bhat is a Sufi Muslim. Bhat was once a teen jihadist fighting against his own country of India until his arm was injured and he became the charge of his family, but he continues jihad against infidels from home, he organizes protests and lends his rage against the Kafirs to grateful journalists from around the world. Islamic Rage Boy is an example of ghira, a uniquely Islamic virtue that is baffling to the Western mind. We value composure. Muslims value ghira. To our Western way of thinking, ghira is toxic religious narcissism.

Ghira explains much of Islam.

Islamic males make dominance displays against Kafirs when they feel Islamic 'honor' has been stolen. They call this display ghira. Ghira is aggressive male pride. Muslims are proud of Mohammed, of his ghira, of his alpha male dominance, his slave ownership, his polygamy, his ruthlessness in conquest. Muslims are proud of Islam, because Islam makes Muslims politically superior to Kafirs. Muslim males confirm their superiority over Kafirs through displays of dominance.

While a Westerner prizes rational thought and evidence-based decisions, the Islamic mind values authoritarian thought and actions based on honor. In Islam, something "is" simply because Mohammed the authority says so.

Mohammed had lots of ghira. In fact, Mohammed had more ghira than anyone, making him extremely wealthy in honor. The Islamic mind thinks that 'honor' is something like money that can be stolen from a person, so Muslims go into a rage when their Islamic 'honor' is 'stolen' from them by Kafirs. Kafirs steal honor from Islam when they apply fact-based analysis to Islam's foundational texts, the Islamic Trilogy or when they discuss Islam. Kafirs are not supposed to discuss Islam because Allah and Muslims haven't given them the 'authority' to discuss Islam. The mullahs alone have the authority to discuss Islam.

Islam's treasury of honor is restored when Muslims steal honor back from the Kafirs. This is done by humiliating them through displays of rage, actual theft and violence.

Every Muslim male can become an authority on ghira merely by reaching into the lowest part of his maleness and dragging out this primitive instinct in the name of Mohammed. It's spontaneous, instantaneous and cheap. Anyone can do it without any special equipment or training. This makes Islam very appealing to unemployable males. They can readily achieve prestige through ghira.
Shakeel cannot read, so he doesn't know what's in the Sira, Koran or hadiths, but he has a perfect understanding of what Islam expects from him.  Islam expects Muslims to imitate Mohammed by conducting jihad against Kafirs.  Kafirs are 'greatly hated by Allah and the believers.' Shakeel Bhat understands perfectly that his duty is to hate Kafirs and he does it to the best of his ability. Naturally, Kashmir police keep an eye on Shakeel.

Dominance Displays in Primates

Kafirs who debate with Muslims are often surprised by the vehemence and rambling illogic of their discourse. It's just ghira.

Dominance displays of humans are similar to those of other primates. A male primate displays dominance when he wants to intimidate a subordinate or to gain rank over him. Muslims often perform dominance displays when debating Islam with Kafirs. Muslims know Kafirs are inferior to them because Kafirs think Mohammed wasn't a prophet.

Sharia law demands Muslims use the 'jihad of the tongue' to put kafirs back in their place of humble submission to Muslims. Muslims are free to improvise, but it means displays of ghira.

Our primate relatives in the animal kingdom display dominance in many ways, with hair bristling, shoulders hunched, lips compressed or teeth showing, so the body looks larger and face meaner. The displaying primate may sway back and forth, shove vegetation, make exaggerated movements, hurl rocks, tear off tree branches and drag them and then run at a potential victim screaming. The display is meant to bring about submissive behavior in the social inferior so he will appease the offended dominant male.

Muslims employ similar dominance techniques in verbal debate: they incongruously tear off parts of the Kafir's argument, they use exaggerated body language, hurl ad hominems, raise their voices and then suddenly it's over. It's a display. It's anything but a dispassionate search for objectivity or following the facts wherever they lead using the scientific method. It's ghira. It's verbal jihad.
When this verbal assault is over, Kafirs are expected to feel guilty for riling the Muslim. Kafirs are told they must appease the Muslim by apologizing for using critical thought in a sacred topic like Islam that does not use it. The Muslim 'wins' because his Kafir opponent is humbled.
Christopher Hitchens said, "It's impossible to satisfy Rage Boy and his ilk. It's stupid to try."

But Hitchens is throwing in the towel too soon. Agreed, it is DIFFICULT to reach people living in a primary-thought process, but not stupid. It requires all the more brainpower to present complex thoughts in simple language...some of which will stick in their minds.

Sigmund Freud wrote (italics added): 'The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little ... In the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience.'

I think we should continue to use evidence-based reasoning to criticize Islam anyway...in spite of Rage Boy. Some of our data will sink in. Fortress Islam will slowly lose its bravado and hypnosis-based primary thinking and Islam will die a lingering death on the ash heap of bad ideas

copyright © Kenneth Roberts, 2013 - all rights reserved

Click here to go from this exploration of Muslim rage and hate,
to the initial writing on Islamic self-righteous rage.

Click here to go from this exploration of Muslim rage and hate
to more about Islam, supposedly a religion of peace:
Mirror Mirror in the Hall, Who Is That Horror in the Hall.

Click here for all the pieces on
Western tolerance and Islamic beliefs.

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