I Answer Dr. Bastiat’s Question about Suicide Bombing with Tolkien and Genesis

Dr. Bastiat wrote a post asking why many Palestinian moms praise their children when they commit suicide bombings. Oddly, a misquotation of Tolkien answers the question.

“Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.”

Palestinian culture can destroy, but it cannot create. If all the Israelis took Adam Carolla’s advice and moved to a part of Mexico with a nice climate, the Palestinians would immediately start killing each other in political infighting while contributing nothing to world science or culture but some vapid pop music.

In this Mexican-Israel scenario, some Palestinians would emigrate to Europe or America where they could have a better life. The Muslim immigrants would have higher rates of violence, welfare dependence, and incest, and they would often be resented by the locals. The Israelis would usually become productive and law-abiding citizens. Given the disturbing number of people praising Hamas across the world, perhaps Israeli refugees would be resented as well, but for reasons not related to their conduct.

About 40 percent of Palestinian marriages are between relatives, by the way.

I speak of emigration because Muslims don’t make societies where people want to live. And when they move to Europe, they carry the customs that make their societies terrible. In the non-hypothetical world. About 40 percent of marriages among Pakistanis in Britain are incestuous as well. Also, Muslim Pakistanis are infamous for raping white and Sikh girls in Britain.

It should be noted that a minority of Muslim immigrants would become scientists, brilliant movie directors, and wonderful writers. But that would be a slim minority. They are more likely to make the places they move to more violent and unpleasant places to live than to figure out new medicines or great art.

Alternatively, Christian Arabs seem to integrate into Western societies pretty well, I have observed. Not perfectly, but pretty well. Same with Iranians who don’t take Islam seriously. Funny that.

It follows that if you aren’t able to make this world into a place you want to live in, and you can’t change your own culture into something that lets you build and create cool things like scientific advancements and art, you feel backed into a corner. Out of a helpless rage, it is quite possible that you might seek to destroy the world you live in out of nihilistic anger. Think of Cain killing his brother. He felt like he could not fix his own sins, so he killed his brother, who was better than him. Cain knew full well it wouldn’t profit him the slightest, but he did it anyway.

While on the topic of killing the innocent, mothers are known to kill their children if they think they will be raped or enslaved, or tortured by a foreign force like Vikings or Comanche. I recall a tragic scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin of a runaway slave woman drowning herself and her child rather than return to slavery. Maybe Palestinian society is so bad that people feel trapped.

Palestinian moms could give their kids a better life if they immigrated to the West and abandoned Islam. But to many people, abandoning the religion of their ancestors would be like cutting off their own skin. It is extremely painful and would be a rejection of who you are as well as a rejection of what your parents are.

It is often said that the children of abusive parents tend to stick to their parents no matter how much damage their parents cause. I have seen this play out in my own experiences. It is as bad as you have heard. The same self-sabotage is true for an abusive culture, as Thomas Sowell has noted. As a collective, people can cling to a culture that keeps them poor and backward, like an individual clings to a parent who will never support them. However, suicide bombing provides the ultimate escape clause. Palestinians get to affirm their religion and culture while fleeing from it.

Dr. Bastiat’s kids will have a good life with sports and education and probably a loving spouse and children. The only thing I can think of that would hold them back is a corrupt government led by a Joe Biden type. Alternatively, the best shot for the children of a Palestinian mom, short of immigration into a non-Muslim country, is to be a powerful and corrupt politician who doles out largess with Iranian oil money. To put it in purely economic terms.

While despair is universal, different groups respond to it in very different ways. It seems that in the United States, we respond to despair by turning to drugs and alcohol or more fervent forms of Christianity (country song link). One is self-destructive, while the other redemptive. The first path says that the world sucks, so I want to alter my brain so the world hurts less. The second path says that Christ redeems your weakness while confronting the suffering of the world. For the Palestinian mom Dr. Bastiat wrote about, suicide bombing offers both an escape and a path to redemption while giving the nihilistic thrill of destroying* a part of creation. Even if we can never empathize with those feelings, we must recognize the power of the spirit of Cain. Destruction is a dark joy for those who cannot create.

*The etymology of the word destroy comes from French, and it literally means the reversal of building.