I’m reading Europe’s Angry Muslims: The Revolt of The Second Generation, and it’s really good. There is very impressive research behind it, I’m spotting no idiocies at all, and I’m learning some really eye-opening stuff. The author makes it very clear that different Muslim communities in different European countries are, in fact, very different, and it’s absolutely crucial not to generalize. And there is not a single whiff of “Islam makes people violent” or, actually, “Islam makes people anything” crap, which is rare and hugely refreshing.
I’m only about 15% in at this point, but one curious insight I want to share in order to create some suspense for my forthcoming Book Notes post on the book is the following. The author argues (based on a plethora of information) that one big reason why the young European Muslims are getting radicalized, turning towards fundamentalist trends in Islam, putting on head-coverings, etc. is because this is their way to try to break the patriarchal hold their families have on them. Before it becomes a revolt against the European societies where they find themselves, it is a revolt against their religiously more lax and secularized parents. For instance, one girl in France who made a huge scandal with her hijab and with how crucial it was for her to have it on is a daughter of a Jewish man and a non-veiled Muslim woman. And there are many more cases of young people who became fundamentalist terrorists after growing up in families who practice Islam in as lax a way as the rest of the French, for instance, practice Catholicism or Judaism.
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