Friday, August 14th, 2015
Stephan: After 15 years of research on the subject I am convinced that fundamentalism, of whatever ilk, is a mental illness manifesting in a religious context.
Whatever religion is proclaimed fundamentalists always present the same attitudes and behavioral characteristics:
1) A conviction of self-righteousness, inevitably grounded and justified by their unique understanding of some holy authority,
2) A non-fact based world view,
3) A sense of persecution,
4) Profound sexual dysfunction inevitably centered on an obsessive need to dominate, subjugate, and control that portion of the population having vaginas. Or, if an individual has a vagina their acquiescence to that domination and control.
One sees this over and over again, it presents with behaviors and attitudes as clear cut as other mental illnesses, and I think fundamentalism should be classified in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the standard classification of mental disorders used by health professionals.
The fact that almost no one in public life will talk about this makes it essentially socially and politically invisible.
A woman, who said she was raped by Islamic State militants, in a refugee camp in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, and made a sex slave.
Credit: Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.
He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.
When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.
“I kept […]
