Why Are So Many Western Men Converting to Islam?
In an interview with Chris Williamson, Sam Harris was asked why so many men in the West are converting to Islam. His response was that Islam is ‘perfect for a specific audience’ (meaning young men) in that it is an ‘explicitly macho religion’:
This was also the reason Nietzsche was attracted to Islam. He wrote that, ‘Islam is a thousand times right in despising Christianity’, which he calls a ‘woman’s religion’. Islam, by contrast, ‘presupposes men’. Its origin, he says, is in ‘male instincts’.
I think that both Harris and Nietzsche are correct, but only insofar as we’re comparing Islam to Christianity. If it were the case that young men were attracted to Islam solely because of its machismo, then why are they not as interested in, say, neo-paganism (Greek or Norse), which is far more ‘masculine’ than the relatively submissive Islam (which literally means submission). It’s not as if there is no neo-paganism in our era, just that it is not (like Islam) the fastest growing religion in the world.