The ‘homicidal empathy’ of the Islamo-left

The concept of ‘suicidal empathy’ is having a moment right now. Coined by Gad Saad in his book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, it’s defined by Wikipedia as ‘a purported phenomenon in which excessive, misdirected and pathological forms of empathy are destructive for the party that exhibits them’. We see it in Western countries, whose leaders tell their shivering populations that they’re not allowed to have cheap fossil fuels because of the polar bears. We see it in young liberal women, who would have a fit if a white man whistled at them, but bend over backwards to make men from rabidly misogynistic cultures welcome in their countries – and this despite the fact that we certainly don’t need to import sex offenders when we have enough of the homegrown kind.

In extreme cases of this lunacy, we see alleged feminists voluntarily donning the hijab – the living shroud that so many brave Muslim-born women have been tortured and killed for trying to cast off. There was a shocking example of this in 2017 when Sweden’s self-proclaimed ‘first feminist government in the world’ donned hijabs and chadors on a trade visit to Tehran, in order to make themselves fit to be seen by the righteous Muslims of the Islamic Republic. They did this shortly after promising to promote a ‘gender-equality perspective’ internationally and adopt a ‘feminist foreign policy’, while ignoring the appeal by the Persian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, who had specifically asked European female politicians to defy the hijab demands when visiting Iran. Also in 2017 there was the Washington ‘Women’s March’, which involved the grotesque spectacle of many non-Muslim women voluntarily hijabing-up.

We certainly see a massive dose of suicidal empathy among the Islamo-left, from Queers for Palestine – often mocked as Turkeys for Christmas – to Owen Jones. Jones probably thinks that he’s so unique that he could sprout wings and fly if he got thrown off a Gazan roof by the local gay-haters. Do these fools honestly believe that the facts about Hamas hating homosexuals are Israeli propaganda? Or are they so bound up in The Wonder Of Me, so convinced of their exceptionalism, that they are as deluded as that strange girl on TikTok, who mused on how she would be treated if taken hostage by Hamas: ‘They would probably comfort me, make sure I had medical attention, make sure I was doing okay…’

The message is loud, clear and strikingly ignorant. Other women / gays / infidels may get raped and / or murdered, but those big angry men would see me as special. We assume that such people are simply thick, or perhaps suffering from extreme narcissistic exceptionalism. A lot of them are mad at their parents and are acting up or acting out. Is it performative social masochism, in which liberal young white folk seek to outdo each other as if in some silly and sinister sport?

Or is this a double bluff – and is it actual masochism, of the kind which provides a sexual thrill? I first thought this back in 2020 when, at the hysterical height of the Black Lives Matter protests, we were treated to the online spectacle of white people – of both sexes, including police officers – kneeling before or kissing the boots of black men. As one wit commented beneath footage of a blond girl doing the latter: ‘I saw it on Pornhub – it gets better!’

The horror of white-on-black slavery might conceivably drive white folk to go too far in their attempts at recompense. But what explains the sight of non-Muslims cheerleading for, gushing over and generally be-clowning themselves vis-à-vis our Islamic brethren? After all, the Muslim religion is the fastest-growing in the world – there are a whopping 53 Muslim-majority countries. Not only did Islam historically pursue empire-building (and the accompanying slavery), it also continues to do so in some cases. These people are not victims.

But perhaps the claim of Muslim victimhood is exactly why a certain kind of mixed-up masochist is drawn to them? This is not a new thing; back in the 1970s, we had well-born white women who couldn’t get enough of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. This song-of-the-desert sexual shtick goes right back to Rudolph Valentino’s 1921 film, The Sheik, although it left out the actual rape of the well-born white woman that was the centrepiece of the 1919 novel on which it was based. The Sheik spawned a host of imitators such as Burning Sands (1922), Tents of Allah (1923), Harum Scarum (1965) starring Elvis Presley and – sexiest of all – Felix the Cat Shatters the Sheik (1926). As late as 1974 Maria Muldaur was warbling away in this vein about ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ (‘I know your daddy’s a sultan / A nomad known to all / With 50 girls to attend him / They jump at his beck and call’ – hmmm, sounds a catch.)

Then of course there were the Fry’s Turkish Delight TV commercials, featuring tents, veiled women and hot men in turbans – ‘Full of Eastern Promise…’ went the tagline. Sadly, the ads did not survive beyond the 1980s, due to fears of cultural stereotyping. Blame for the demise of these commercials can fairly be laid at the door of two figures: Edward Said with his 1978 book, Orientalism, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who came up with the idea of ‘othering’ in 1985. In a stern essay on the yummy rosewater-flavoured treat, Muslim convert Merryl Wynn Davis wrote in an issue of Critical Muslim: ‘The problem – for problem it surely is – is that like sugar on teeth enamel the legacy of Orientalist imagination is so long lasting in its effects that it corrodes the contemporary ability to hold informed dialogues of mutual respect and understanding.’ Consider yourself scolded, sweetie-scoffer!

Is it beyond the realms of possibility that those women – and gay men – once attracted to the sexual cliché of the sheikh might now be drawn to Islamism because it appeals to them in a less than wholesome manner? We’re not meant to say that things are sex-things now, even things which blatantly are. Cross-dressing. Men wearing huge prosthetic breasts. Dressing up as ‘leather pups’ and being taken out on a lead in public by a cruel-looking ‘owner’. But women write love letters to serial killers, so there’s no telling how murky things can get Down There, as my mum used to call it.

If people want to make themselves into doormats for jihadis to wipe their feet on, that’s their business. But when you use the persecution and even killings of others as ammunition for your nasty little thrill, we move into the realms of not suicidal empathy, but of homicidal empathy. The term was originally coined to describe an irrational bias shown by juries towards violent suspects at the expense of a victim or a law enforcer. But we’ve seen it recently in the barely concealed sadistic revelling in anti-Semitism on the part of some of those on the left in this country. In France, where they always go further with these things, a popular song among the rioters and even the schoolchildren involved in the recent clashes has been ‘M*R*H’ by the rapper BORO700. The song, if it can be called that, name-checks the gunman Mohamed Merah, who killed three small Jewish children in 2012, and the Islamist slaughterers at the Bataclan in 2015.

Was there ever a sicker contradiction? Sadistically glorying in the killing of others – yet masochistically wallowing in the destruction of one’s own civilisation. ‘Nothing human is alien to me’, said the Roman playwright Terence. Thankfully, some things are alien to those of us with one iota of decency, such as the pathological empathy – both suicidal and homicidal – now spreading like wildfire throughout the cities of the West.