Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Clues from a Bomber's Wife

In the search for answers as to the motivation of the Boston bombers, it has been mentioned that the elder brother, Tamerlan, had an American wife.  On other occasions it has been mentioned that he had been reported to police for domestic violence.

Today RT reports that testimony from relatives in Russia describes Tamerlan (sic) as very respectful and devoted to family.  Apparently, he was interested in Islam, but not fanatically.

Comments claim with no direct evidence that he was radicalized in the United States.But I’m also remembering a quote from Tamerlan  to the effect that he had no American friends, and of a quote from the younger brother, Dzhokhar, that he had been in this country for ten years and wanted out.

Finally, there is a report that Tamerlan engaged in non-speicified vociferous interventions at the mosque he frequented. I believe that taken together, these clues point to a radicalization in the United States, which is not about religion as such but about disapproval of American culture.

The American media never mentions this fundamental aspect of Islam’s problem with the West. Yet it is not that Muslims see God differently, but  rather that the differences are about culture.  We deplore the treatment of women in Muslim societies, failing to recognize that the burka and segregation of the sexes are extremes whose counterpart is the vulgarity that has accompanied - and even preceded - women’s liberation.  Our failure to recognize the aberrations of our own society is no different from the failure of Muslim men to recognize theirs.

Though this may be the subject of a separate blog, in other news today it would appear that the FBI’s failure to monitor the Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been because we consider the possible radicalization of Chechen young men to be Russia’s problem - and further, that we had supported the Chechen ‘rebels’ in their fight for independence from Russia.  Yet another example of our proteges - or ‘enemies’ enemies’ turning against us, perhaps for the same reasons they were fighting the modernizing Russians (see my blog ‘Astonishing Chechnya’).

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