Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
Great post. I have some general questions. I want to understand the mindset of the young Muslim man.
I assume you are Muslim and very happy to be Muslim. But if you were not happy what are your options. Can a person leave Islam? What are the ramifications? Do people often leave? Christians in North America have left their religion, there weren't many athiests 50 years ago.
Why is the 'western-born' Muslim person angry? Or more specifically, why is the 18 year old Calgary-born Muslim boy angry? I see your argument above and understand why the Middle Eastern Muslim is angry although I don't 100% buy it.
But why is the immigrant Muslim angry? Why are they joining ISIS? And if they are angry about Islam, why aren't they leaving it?
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Maybe I can shed some light on this since I knew a guy that became radicalized here in Calgary. Although he wasn't western-born, he did come to Canada from the Middle East with his family at a fairly young age (I think when he was around 9 or 10 years old).
For the most part, he was a normal Canadian guy. He was a huge Flames fan, we would go out for beers and watch all the games religiously. We were always out at the bars, chasing women, in our early 20's. So nothing was out of the ordinary by all means. The thing is, though, he always felt like an outsider. He was a great guy, but he always felt a bit inferior to some of the rest of us for some reason or another.
By our mid 20's, most of us were finishing off University, a few of us were getting married, travelling, etc., he on the other hand was stuck doing menial jobs and he kind of felt as though life was passing him by. He started getting heavily into drinking and smoking weed... pretty much just wasting his life away. After a year and a half or so of his life spiralling out of control, he turned to religion in hopes it would straighten him out... and it did, for a few months that is. He stopped drinking and smoking, became dedicated to his job, started looking into upgrading his schooling, so by all means, life was starting to look good for him. For some reason, though, he didn't think it was enough, and he started hanging out with some fairly radical muslim guys. There was a mosque that he invited me to visit here in Calgary once that had a very radical following. The imam brainwashed the patrons into thinking that this society isn't for us. That Western society is from the devil. That a true muslim must fight against these ideas and we will only have victory once the Caliphate is re-established. A lot of the guys bought this crap. A lot of them were troubled young men that felt marginalized by society (like my friend). They all felt as though they had power all of a sudden and that they have a reason to fight the society that has rejected them. I only went to one Friday prayer service at this place and it was enough for me. I lost contact with my friend shortly after this incident. I heard through some friends that he went to Syria after this, joined some "group" (possibly Al-Qaeda or an early form of ISIS).
So the TL;DR version, a lot of these guys feel marginalized by society and want to lash out. They're not much different than any other mass murderers.