RUTHFULLY YOURS

Print This E-mail This

ShareThis

We are often curious why economic sanctions don’t work. One would think that when we cut off trade, supplies, and cut Iran and other Arab states in the region out of the loop, they would show some concern. Why is a millionaire like Osama bin Laden content living in a cave without running water, with a minimum of four wives and not needing anything more? This brings us to the question, where is capitalism/materialism in the Muslim world?

In a poem by Robert Frost called The Road not Taken, the poet cites a choice between two paths. As a psychoanalyst and a psychologist writing this article, we could not help but compare the two roads chosen comparatively from East to West.  Our Wizard of Oz takes us to technology, stock markets, trade, industry, entertainment, etc., while the Muslim road chooses the Road of Jihad, known literally in Arabic as fil sabil Allah, fighting in the path of Allah.

Our yellow brick road may share the same destination to reach a final goal, but one leads to what Freud refers to as Eros (life instinct) and the other Thanatos (death instinct). Although many psychologists have given up Freud’s original concept life and death forces, the road to Jihad may have resurrected it.

We found it striking that the image presented in the second issue of the Al Qaeda English language magazine Inspire was that of a yellow brick road! (see below) Were its nefarious editorial recruiters trying to appeal to the pre-existing fantasy and cultural icon of the Wizard of Oz? Yet, with this jihadi twist? We can only speculate that the cultural formatting leaves us closely akin to what the intentions of Al Qaeda are, who are unstoppable in their “cause.” The terrorist cult will stop at nothing.

This brings us to the concept and meaning of capitalism and material, the differences, what it means to a Westerner and what it means to a Muslim. We narrow it down to two fundamental reasons.  Envy and deprivation.  In The Banality of Suicide Terrorism, Dr. Kobrin refers to both America and Israel as the hated females in the mind’s eye of Osama bin Laden. Why? Because the female is made to be inferior to the male in jihadi culture and under Sharia law, Yet the jihadis themselves would protest this and deny that they mistreat their women. In order to maintain their macho male identity, they must externalize their murderous rage targeting the female.  In our analysis, rage stemming from the unhealthy fusion with the mother exceeds murder itself and causes such evil crimes as beheading and stoning or what they refer to as honor killings. The surplus of their rage targets the infidels (We America) and of course Israel!

In their Wizard of Jihad fantasy, as interpreters of our yellow brick road metaphor, we delve beyond the death instinct to bonding with the mother. It is a fundamental desire to fuse with the mother who has long ago abandoned them by their Muslim forefathers. The poem – “Oh Excuse Me Mother” appears below and is taken from page 72 of Inspire. The concept of fusion is very hard for Westerners to comprehend how utterly tied in they are to their mothers and because they are, they have to rebel against them and with it comes feelings of vulnerability and dependency, which for the Muslim male cannot be tolerated. These affects in our analysis evoke enormous rage as they experience and feel that they are infantilized and emasculated. (see second  poem below). Maybe this is a stretch, but could it be that this is why they make bombs in the kitchens of their moms? This psychological problem of a super enmeshed mother-son relationship also occurs with the mother-daughter relationship as well. (In future articles we will address the later unique dynamic of female on female). We allude to the mother-son analysis in an article in the inaugural issue of Inspire.

Today there is an upward movement to encourage moderate Muslims and those who share our side of the road, to fight and work against the distorted and irrational element, which has hijacked their religion to jihad. Even though many see the violence, we must offer our support to assuage their fears and paranoia projected into them by their own violators. In a very real way, the jihadis and the Wizard of Jihad are contaminants of the Muslim faith. Were they to see this as a brave religious act, they perhaps could begin to purity their own religion.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

and sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

and looked down one as far as I could

to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

and having perhaps the better claim

because it was grassy and wanted wear;

though as for that, the passing there

had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

in leaves no feet had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less travelled by,

and that has made all the difference

and

From Al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine, Edition 2, p. 72..

Please excuse me, O love of my life.

You have always been a mother of mercy.

Forgive me for the errors of my days,

And pardon me for that phase.

I know that I have wounded your heart,

Since I frequently experience the same dart.

But Paradise is calling me to conquer my fears

Thus I flew across the sea leaving you in tears…

Please excuse me, and don’t say

That I separated myself from you to play.

How is it that I separated my soul

From the one who kept me from the cold?

How is it that I make you cry,

When you are the one most precious to my soul and eye?

You are the more precious than the day which my heart loves

As the thought of you gathers the beautiful doves.

If you knew all the facts

You would certainly relax.

So lend me your compassion,

As I explain myself in succinct words of expression.

Mother, the Muslim’s humiliation is called peace,

And the heedless Rulers have put the Ummah up for a lease.

Mother, the Regimes of Sabotage have gathered to our land,

Sinking our Ummah’s nobility to that of sand.

Mother, Palestine is the little child under the rubble,

And her grieving mother can only be heard in a bubble.

Mother, I can’t let this humiliation continue,

Allowing the disbelievers to rape our Nation in the holiest of venues.

The enemy will shout, yell and scream

But I will continue to let my heart beam

For I have put my worries behind my nation’s

Preparing myself to leave all of life’s sanctions.

Even if it means that I fight and die,

Without saying goodbye.

Mother, I want to be above all of the strife,

So please excuse me, O love of my life.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Dr. Joanie Jutta Lachkar is a licensed Marriage and Family therapist in private practice in Brentwood and Tarzana, California, who teaches psychoanalysis and is the author of The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Marital Treatment (1992, The Many Faces of Abuse: Treating the Emotional Abuse of High -Functioning Women (1998), The V-Spot, How to Talk to a Narcissist, How to Talk to a Borderline and a recent  paper, “The Psychopathology of Terrorism”  presented at the Rand Corporation and  the International Psychohistorical Association. She is also an affiliate member for the New Center for Psychoanalysis.