A Stitch in Haste

Thomas Friedman:

Why are young Sunni Muslim males, from London to Riyadh and Bali to Baghdad, so willing to blow up themselves and others in the name of their religion? Of course, not all Muslims are suicide bombers; it would be ludicrous to suggest that.

But virtually all suicide bombers, of late, have been Sunni Muslims. There are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans. Angry Norwegians. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims, over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?

This question suggested an analogy to me — one that is admittedly a stretch and perhaps flat-out wrong. But I'll posit it anyway: The analogy between Europe's unassimilated young Sunni Muslims and America's unassimilated young gays.

Now of course troubled gay kids don't go blowing up innocent third parties. But they do occasionally commit suicide. And they are far more likely to ideate about suicide. They engage in destructive behavior, but mostly to themselves. They drink, use drugs, have unprotected sex. They often turn their backs on "traditional" American society, formalizing and finalizing an exclusion that often already existed informally within their family and community.

And often the family and community responds much the same way as Friedman does: by asking why. How can young people on the cusp of having all the benefits of modern Western life be so immune to assimilation — to just be "normal"?

Friedman has some suggestions in the context of young Sunni terrorists:

One is that Europe is not a melting pot and has never adequately integrated its Muslim minorities, who, as The Financial Times put it, often find themselves "cut off from their country, language and culture of origin" without being assimilated into Europe...

Meanwhile, here in America a large segment of the population rejects the "melting pot" concept and tries to deny it to gays with discriminatory laws and histrionic gay-baiting rhetoric. In Europe the militant Sunnis choose not to assimilate; in America many seek not to permit gays to assimilate.

Also at work is Sunni Islam's struggle with modernity. Islam has a long tradition of tolerating other religions, but only on the basis of the supremacy of Islam, not equality with Islam.

Again, there is a sort of inverse correlation with contemporary American fundamentalism, where religious fundamentalists essentially tell gays something like: "In America you are free to be whomever you want, so long as you understand that this is a Christian nation. We may 'tolerate' you, but always remember exactly who's tolerating whom here."

Part of what seems to be going on with these young Muslim males is that they are, on the one hand, tempted by Western society, and ashamed of being tempted.

Another striking similarity to young gays. They want to be ordinary Americans, yet they also want, as gays, to be themselves. And they see a quite vocal group of people who insist the two are mutually incompatible. How can one not expect youths confronted with such a dilemma not to become deeply troubled and in some cases act out on those inner conflicts?

Finally,

This is not about the poverty of money. This is about the poverty of dignity and the rage it can trigger.

If there's one thing that American gays can relate to, it's the "poverty of dignity" we face in America today.

Again, you're not very likely to see a gay with sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. But the next time you see a gay person behaving in ways you cannot comprehend — bizarre ways or self-destructive ways or isolationist ways, ask yourself: Was it being gay that made him that way, or was it being gay in America that made him so?