Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids

By contrast, despite the destruction of innocent lives that they crave, the popular view is that terrorists are driven by some external, if distorted, ideology that they at least see as a noble cause. The illegal child porn images found on the computers of a number of extremists give the lie to this simple division.

It is probably sensible for the police to take stock before assuming there is an inevitable link between terrorism, especially the jihadi variety, and child pornography. But it is possible that an extreme interpretation of Islam that regards male sexual urges as so uncontrollable that all women have to cover themselves from head to toe generates in some men a confusion about their sexuality and appropriate sexual partners. An interest in child pornography may be one consequence.

In 2005 anti-terror police were monitoring Abdul Khalisadar, a Muslim preacher. They were astonished to find that his DNA came up on the national database for an unsolved rape in Whitechapel. His computer contained enough extreme child pornography for him to be charged with possession of this illegal material, but he was never convicted of terror offences.

Another religiously observant youth who was caught up in British anti-terror surveillance in 2006 was also found to have serious child pornography on his computer.

In Spain Abdelkader Ayachine, a man in his forties who is thought to be a leader of a terrorist cell, is awaiting trial accused of having thousands of extreme child pornography images. These files were on the same computers as videos of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalist ideologues extolling jihad.

Just as anti-terror police have found that their investigations have led them to collectors of child pornography, so also have child protection officers found that their investigations have led them to people preparing to carry out terrorist acts. This overlap is seen as of such significance that Scotland Yard has considered whether child protection officers should be alerted to the possibilities of terrorists being among their suspects.

Anti-terror officers could also use child protection searches to enhance their ability to identify people planning attacks. Apparently, though, this plan has not been implemented.

The link between child porn and terrorism may be more prosaic than the police believe. The sheer scale of child pornography images on the web now beggars belief. It is growing exponentially by the month. Millions of images are now being passed around the world, drawn from thousands of websites. It has to be asked whether there is something special about aspiring terrorists that leads them into child porn, or vice versa.

In their search for explanations for the link, investigators have let their imaginations run riot. Perhaps the secret internet child porn networks are a good cover for clandestine communications between terrorists.

Another suggestion is that the grooming involved in child sexual abuse has parallels to the seduction of youngsters into radical Islam. But a recent report by the American Psychological Association has shown that the collection of child porn does not have very strong links to grooming and actual abuse of children directly by the collectors. Any sort of manipulation of youngsters from the Hitler Youth to the present day involves a form of grooming and there is no need to collect thousands of images to take advantage of vulnerable youngsters.

The problem is that much of our understanding of terrorism is derived from the official statements of the leaders who play up ideological and spiritual claims. It is rare for our ways of thinking about terrorists to be informed by direct contact with them, where we can see them for what they actually are. They are often people with a poor understanding of what they are trying to achieve or the real consequences of their actions.

In recent studies that I have been able to carry out, it has become clear that many jihadis come to acts of terror because of the social groups to which they belong, or even through criminal enterprises. Their ideological commitment is often much weaker than their loyalty to their associates and the group with which they identify.

It is therefore not surprising that some terrorists share predilections and obsessions with a frighteningly large proportion of the adult male population. Paradoxically it may therefore be more revealing about the nature of jihadi and other terrorists. It shows that terrorists are not all spiritually or ideologically focused men on a mission.

— David Canter is Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool

Hugh comments:

If the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil, Muhammad, espies a six-year-old girl and declares her to be his, and then when she is nine years old, has her delivered up to him, to be “married” at the age of nine, the marriage to be promptly consummated, then what should Muslims, or the vast Muslim masses, be expected to think?

We know what the learned Shi’a theologian Ayatollah Khomeini thought, for virtually his first act as Iran’s ruler was to lower the marriageable age of girls in Iran to nine years. We know how many Afghani men in their fifties marry girls who are nine and ten and eleven, because we have seen the pictures, and read the accompanying text, in a story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. We know that similar child-brides can be found all over Pakistan, and in the Middle East, and North Africa, and in Somalia, and among the Muslim millions who come from Islam-ruled countries and are admitted into the Western, Infidel lands as “refugees” (from what? from Islam, apparently).

Why would the example of Muhammad, which has been reflected in the laws and customs by which Muslims live, not encourage sexual interest in girls as young as Aisha was when she “married” Muhammad? Wouldn’t an observable absence of such sexual interest on the part of Muslims be harder to explain, than the presence of such interest? For if Muhammad is the most important figure in Islam, what he did, what he favored, matters. He is the model in all things.

Muhammad is first of all the warrior, in the mind’s eye of Muslims (he cannot be depicted, though the Shi’a often break that prohibition), sword in hand, so very different from Jesus, who never touched a sword and would hold his hand skyward to make a point or illustrate a parable,and so very different from lawgiver Moses who strained to lift, never a weapon, but rather the Tables of the Law, so very different from The Buddha, who for his future statuary sat quietly in padmasana, his face reflecting a heavy-lidded internal peace.

But Muhammad is not only the warrior who fought in nearly 80 campaigns, all but one offensive. He is also the man who had nine wives and two concubines, and his favorite wife, Aisha, had had sexual intercourse with him when she was nine. Doesn’t it make sense that if Muhammad is to be emulated in all things, many Muslim men may will themselves into a kind of nympholepsy, or at least overcome any innate distaste they might naturally feel, in order to more easily emulate their model? That this has not been discussed, and is deliberately ignored by the Infidel police and others in authority involved in these raids across Europe, no longer surprises. But it does disturb. Why not discuss this matter, why not — by speaking the truth — put Muslims, everywhere aggressively on the march, instead on the defensive? Why keep overlooking the obvious?

Posted by: Hugh  at October 17, 2008 12:45 PM

The Sex Life of the Prophet

Was Islam’s “perfect man” sexually restrained?

Summary Answer: 

Muhammad had sex with just about anyone he pleased, thanks to Allah’s remarkable interest in his personal sex life.

Muhammad was married to eleven women at one time, relegating them to either consecutive days or (according to some accounts) all in one night.  He married a 9-year-old girl and even his adopted son’s wife.  On top of that Muhammad had a multitude of slave girls and concubines with whom he had sex – sometimes on the very days in which they had watched their husbands and fathers die at the hands of his own armies.

So, by any realistic measure, the creator of the world’s most sexually restrictive religion was also one of the most sexually indulgent characters in history.

here’s more…