Does Islam have a concept of madness?

I'm not sure what the tradition of the study of mental illness is in Islam, but from where I'm sitting they're pretty bonkers! I mean - very clever folks - but that fine line and all - I think they crossed it :( shame. When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we'll find peace. - Jimi Hendrix

"the presenter said the bombers should not be labelled as Muslims just as nutters because they just wanted to commit mass murder." I think the presenter is wrong in their initial position - if they genuinely are saying these people have a mental health condition, rather than just some 'mad' ideas. I don't think it's helpful - particularly to the large % of our population diagnosed with a mental illness - to conflate mad and bad in this way. The bombers are people with a deeply unpleasant political and religious agenda. There's no reason to suspect that they have, for example, schizophrenia or bipolar depression. In a historical sense, the majority of nasty political agendas have been pursued by calm, rational people. Some vicious tyrants - Hitler and Stalin, for example - have ended up going mad but it's not clear whether it was madness that made them evil dictators or being evil dictators that made them mad.

I think it is a form of mental illness to want to kill and injure complete strangers in the name of a God who is supposedly infinitely good.

By the same token, Brooosh, I think it's a mental illness to want to turn unconnected events into mental illnesses... *insert sarky smiley if you so wish* Deviation from any norm is not evidence of mental illness. If it was, then it'd be an illness to drink coffee in a family of tea drinkers. *insert another appropriate emoticon if you so wish* Human beings have the ability to believe a variety of things, some of which may seem beyond comprehension to others. If you can't see how one human being can find ways of justifying killing another human being, then I'd suggest that you've got a poor understanding of not only mental illness, but of human beings too. Camilla, brooosh, are neither of you familiar with the history of political violence? Because that's what this is. Ever heard the phrases 'no-one is innocent', 'if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the cause' or 'if you're not with us, you're against us'? That's the mindset of the current wave of terrorists. To them, it is we versus not we. Unless you agree explicitly, you are condoning the current status quo, and are therefore a viable target. It's a form of thinking, an ideological trick of the mind if you like, that turns the world into the shape of a battlefield, with everyone as combatants, whether they know it or not. And the things is, if you believe it, it becomes true. That couldn't be more different from an ongoing experience of altered mood, motivation, perception or experience that seriously impacts on someone's everyday activities. Cheers, Mark

We'll have to disagree on this Mark. In my world if you kill yourself and a load of strangers on the basis that God will reward you in heaven for so doing you are absolutely barking.

I remember the Islamic 'nutter' who was screaming 'We love death the way you love life.' on the tele. It's a mind-set that is 'ahem' foreign to us. The fact that these gullible young men take in the guff that there will be 70 virgins waiting for them in heaven when they commit suicide in the name of Allah. It is not specified what kind of virgins: goats maybe? Mind you that might not dissuade some of them. But enough of this facetiousness (for now.) I remember a Channel4 documentary last year, and I really should jot these things down so that I could make an exact reference, but hey ho. The presenter had spent 5 years travelling around the Middle East including Iran. He met tens of thousands of Arabs and Iranians. He asked all of them whether they thought violence was the way to resolve the problems between the Middle East and the West. A resounding 4% said yes. A very moderate 96% said no. Oh Broosh, George Bush initially said that the War on Iraq was a 'Crusade' he was forced to recant. And we all know Tony Blair is a deeply religious man. I wonder how many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis died at their hands? One mans freedom fighter is another man's terrorist and all that.

Brooosh, are you effectively saying that any form of terrorism is beyond understanding? If so, what would be your way of dealing with it? You see, whether you can understand it or not, it's happening. You'd like to see it reclassified as a form of illness, or based on your further post, you see it as being irrational. (You really should decide whether you think that it's irrational or an illness before you start trying to have it classified as a psychiatric condition. Irrationality is not de facto evidence of mental illness.) What's frightening you so much that you can't delve into the motivations of people's actions that you disagree with? It seems to me you've confused condemning something and pronouncing it anathema. And you managed to drag one in four or so of the population in there as well. Bravo for your ill thought out yet strident opinions! Cheers, Mark

Mark You are getting terribly worked up about nothing. I'm not saying or thinking any of the stuff you are trying to suggest I am saying or thinking. I am just making the blatantly simple point that these lads are a bit strange in the head to do these crazy things. Which bit of that do you not get? Stop trying to intellectualise everything. I am not an intellectual and refuse to be sucked into that kind of discussion. love Brooosh xxx

If you don't want to have your opinions challenged brooosh, you shouldn't really air them in a public forum. Camilla, personality disorders are still somewhat contentious and occupy a weird space between normality and pathology. The main problem is that it can be very difficult to help people with personality disorders, because they understand the world and themselves in a very different way to the way that most people would. Some would say that they don't need help, because they don't have an illness. I'm not sure about the 'brainwashed by a nasty cult' line. All movements fulfil some sort of need. If they didn't, they wouldn't have any members. This is as true of the WI as it is any extremist organisation. Rightly or wrongly, there is something that is appealing about the idea of being engaged in a war for freedom. People like to feel that they're important and that the fate of the world rests upon their shoulders, or at least some do. I think for most of us the world is a confusing and at some times frightening place. A lot of us like someone we trust to tell us how to deal with those feelings, because we're unsure of how to deal with them in ourselves. The young men involved in terrorist activity usually have a hugely inflated sense of their own importance in the battle between their belief and those that they see as opposing it. I think it's dangerous to suggest that people who believe in extreme ideas don't actually believe them but have been tricked, as if captured by a destructive version of stage hypnosis. The key to effecting someone's behaviour, and pushing them toward a particular course of action, is to speak to either their fears or desires. Extremist thought speaks to both. It creates a world peopled by sick, degenerate, misguided and openly hostile people who, unable to see the truth, are beyond contempt and a beautiful coming world where rightness wins out and the world is healed of its problems. This can be very seductive. The idea of having detox centres is an interesting one. Certainly, for some people in extremist organisations of whatever stripe, there is an experience that the only people they have met with intellectual pursuits are those who are also extremists. There's a problem there, if the only intellectual vibrant and exciting people you run into are the one who want to overturn civilisation as we know it. Cheers, Mark

"It is not specified what kind of virgins: goats maybe?" LOL When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we'll find peace. - Jimi Hendrix

"If you don't want to have your opinions challenged brooosh, you shouldn't really air them in a public forum." Mark, you are mistaken. I don't have a problem with anyone challenging me.

I am inclined to agree with camilla, and brooosh, which is worrying, because it would be wrong. But it would be easy. It is seductive. The cloak of mental illness is being flung over too many behaviours. It sounds a lot more liberal than saying they are all cunts. It sounds better than I don't understand. Apart form the usual ones, the behaviours that don't fit (which change over time and place, but seem to be more encompassing), it is also the ones we don't understand. Some of them might be cunts. Some of them are coming from a place along way from me, in every respect too far for me to understand.Don't make 'em mad. my ex was like that, coming from a far distant place, no-one made sense of her, so they did stick her with borderline-personality disorder, which can mean lots of things, but does sometimes get dished out when no-one cane make any sense of the situation.

They aren't mentally ill. They have a clear train of thought, but that train is barreling down the track at a hundred and eighty friggin miles per hour. Extremists in general commit whatever actions they deem necessary to further their cause, regardless of the harm it may cause or the possible repercussions. In all honesty, they are simply hardwired differently. An extremist is an oyxmoron: sane and insane at the same time. “This age thinks better of a gilded fool than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.”

Yes, what Redrecon said. It's war, pure and simple.

"I am just making the blatantly simple point that these lads are a bit strange in the head to do these crazy things. Which bit of that do you not get? Stop trying to intellectualise everything. I am not an intellectual and refuse to be sucked into that kind of discussion." Mark isn't intellectualising things. He's criticising you for saying something which is offensive and, more importantly, inaccurate. Millions of people in the UK suffer have mental health conditions. There's no connection between having a mental health condition and holding an extreme political view. There's no evidence that any of the extremists involved in any of the recent bombing campaigns have a mental health condition. There's no evidence for Camilla's assertion that they have personality disorders. Both of you are falsely connected the evil actions of people who are - unless they can prove otherwise - responsible for those actions with millions of people living with illnesses. It's no more accurate to assume that a terrorist has a mental illness than it is to assume they have cancer or heart disease.

Buk You are doing exactly the same thing Mark was doing. Making a song and dance about nothing. To be perfectly honest I haven't a clue what the two of you are on about. Blowing yourself up and taking dozens of innocent people with you is not the act of a rational being. One perfectly plausible explanation for this irrationality is that the bombers have a form of mental illness. You're so busy looking for complicated explanations that you fail to consider the blindingly obvious. It's a common failing among you intellectuals.

The WI an extremist organisation? Bloomin' 'eck!

The point I'm making is that mental illness is not the same things as having an extreme political opinion. I don't think that's an intellectual point. "Blowing yourself up and taking dozens of innocent people with you is not the act of a rational being. One perfectly plausible explanation for this irrationality is that the bombers have a form of mental illness." I just think you're wrong on both points. Suicide bombing isn't irrational. If you're aiming to kill people and make people frightened, it's a very rational way of going about it. The fact that bombers are prepared to kill innocent people to make a political point does make them bad, it doesn't make them mad. I'm not looking for a complicated explanation. You're the one looking for an explanation beyond the blindingly obvious one that we have, that some people who want to make a political point, and create fear amongst their 'enemies', are using violence to do so. You're the one offering the unnecessary wooly liberal explanation, here.

hahahah....

What does intrigue me is why certain peoples use the suicide tactic: we had it in the second world war with Japanese suicide bombers. I might understand their tactics, in that if they dropped their bombs on a ship and missed, and then were shot down, mission failed. So flying your bomb laden plane straight at said ship then you should succeed in incapacitating the vessel. There is evidence also that the pilots were given drugs to take away their fear of dying. The IRA never felt the need to send out their men to commit suicide to spread terror. If you commit suicide in a bombing attack that is one mission successfully completed. But if you leave your car bomb on a meter and walk away, you can do this many times over. Maybe it's the prohibitive cost of parking these days.

"There's no evidence that any of the extremists involved in any of the recent bombing campaigns have a mental health condition." Of course not. I mean crashing a car laden with petrol and gas canisters into an airport building so you suffer horrific burns and possibly kill dozens of strangers including perhaps some fellow Muslims in order to go to heaven where you will be rewarded by being allowed to have sex with no fewer than 70 virgins is . . . obviously clear evidence of sanity.

Broosh, You're stuck with a school playground definition of what a mental health condition is. Believing in something that is not logical, sensible or good is not a mental illness. Believing in something that you find incomprehensible is not a mental illness.

School kids can be amazingly perceptive and insightful, Buk. Ever heard of the Emperor's New Clothes?

Yeah, your belief that an extreme political opinion is the same thing as a mental illness is currently walking down the street, with no clothes on, looking extremely stupid.

I can tell you're a poet Buk. We poets see things in different ways. We'll just have to agree to disagree. If I choose to believe that two plus two is four, then so be it. That's the poet in me.

Broosh, an answer that does not take you any further than restating the question is no answer at all. Witness: "Why do people want to kill themselves and others? Because they are mentally ill. How do we know they are mentally ill? Because they want to kill themselves and others." Being interested in understanding something isn't ludicrous, pompous or intellectual. Neither is correcting someone's misapprehensions and poor understanding of a particular phrase or topic. I've wanted to correct you on your understanding of what constitutes mental illness, because it does no one (not least people who do have mental health difficulties) any good to allow to pass a popular understanding that leads to prejudice and further misunderstanding. If you are saying that something is a mental illness, you must be presuming it is treatable and detectable. If you aren't saying that, then you're using mental illness or madness incorrectly or in such a way that suggests that 'madness' is somehow inevitably destructive. I don't think you're correct in either sense. A terrorist, or aspiring terrorist, has chosen, by definition, to cause terror. Spot the clever clue in the word? You and I may not believe their thinking is 'right', or may find it difficult to take the steps of thinking required to enter that mindset, but there is no evidence of those involved having passed beyond the point where they are unable to make informed decision about their own welfare and the welfare of others. I don't agree with their actions or the chain of thought that led there, but I do know enough about the way that extremist groups work, how terrorists think and the way human beings work to understand it. Cheers, mark

Mark You and I will just have to agree to disagree on this one. The alternative is for me to spend the next half hour writing a point by point explanation of what lies behind my views, how you have misunderstood or misrepresented them (albeit unintentionally) and where I agree and disagree with you. The result would be incredibly tedious and no one would read it. You would probably counter with an even more elegantly crafted rebuttal and so it would go on. Maybe one day when we get a chance to meet I will explain my position to you and you can tell me where I'm wrong, and I can give you my response. No hard feelings mate, but we've both got better things to do with our time. Brooosh

"Speaking as someone who has suffered from mental illness for about a quarter of a century, I would like to assert that I have never blown myself up or tried to fly a plane into a building" LOL Some are probably abit crackers. Some may have lost family members through conflict. Some would have been brought-up strictly religious. Some will be murderers and troublemakers. Some simply vulnerable and young. Some jealous. Some suicidal. blahdeeblah...so many different lives and circumstances... When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we'll find peace. - Jimi Hendrix

I have a theory about suicide bombings: All suicide bombers suffer from ADD. They were supposed to get away from the bomb, but ended up being distracted by something. XD Yeah, I have ADD.

Oh, good Christ, this will go around in circles forever! Some may be guilty of taking themselves and their issues a *wee* bit seriously. Hi! My name's Vanessa, and I'm a shoe-aholic. "The WI an extremist organisation? Bloomin' 'eck!" Styx, I love you, man. You took the words right out of my fingers. I have your blankie, cuppa and jam roll ready, any time you want, sweets. *points to laden tray*

Brooosh said "In my world if you kill yourself and a load of strangers on the basis that God will reward you in heaven for so doing you are absolutely barking." Surely if you are absolutely barking, it's Dog that will reward you, not God. Dontcha just love dyslexic fundamentalism??

Good point Andrew. You've put the fun back into fundamentalism, while I'm trying to put the mental back into fundamentalism.

"Oh, good Christ, this will go around in circles forever! Some may be guilty of taking themselves and their issues a *wee* bit seriously." Broosh is promoting prejudice against people with mental illness with his ignorant, ill-informed views. That is a serious issue because people with mental illness face huge levels of discrimination in our society. People's failure to understand the difference between a mental illness and actions that are 'crazy' or 'insane' is a key factor in that.

Don't be so ridiculous Buk People with mental illness face huge levels of discrimination because of attitudes like yours. It's time you stopped stigmatising mental illness and recognise that it is just another illness like any other. If I accused the terrorists of suffering from diabetes no one would be too bothered. But because I use the phrase mental illness you get all needlessly wound up. It is just another illness, and no need for people to be ashamed of it or embarrassed about it, or overly sensitive about it, as you appear to be. The mentally ill can do without your kind of support. Just lighten up for goodness' sake.

I'm a member of AA and I had a problem with their use of the word insanity, so I looked it up in the OED. The definition of insane is 'not being of sound mind.' I thought m'kay, I've never been of sound mind. Can I have my blankie, cuppa tea and jam roll now please AG?

lol When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we'll find peace. - Jimi Hendrix

Have you met all of 'the mentally ill' brooosh? Whether or not people are embarrassed or ashamed or overly sensitive about their own mental illness, it's the attitudes and behaviour of other people that create stigma. I'm not sure how suggesting that people with mental illness suffer stigma is the cause of stigma. The problem is that mental health difficulties don't just exist as physical illnesses, they're also tied up with very complicated ideas of what is normal and what is acceptable behaviour and what isn't. We have an idea of madness that has no relationship to actual mental health difficulties. So we have a situation where popular ideas of what is 'mad' influence attitudes toward people with mental health difficulties. Therefore, it's a good idea to counter any ideas that muddy the waters and obscure the real experience of mental health difficulty. brooosh, I'd be happy to discuss your ideas with you. I'd be lot more happy to do that then deal with a 'crossed-arms, grumpy face I don't want to talk about'. Cheers, Mark

Mark You make some interesting points. I hope we get a chance one day to meet up and discuss this. Beyond a certain point I can't handle in-depth serious discussion on an online forum. I tried it a while back and it just doesn't work for me. All the best Brooosh

"It's time you stopped stigmatising mental illness and recognise that it is just another illness like any other." Yes, that's what I was asking you to do. "If I accused the terrorists of suffering from diabetes no one would be too bothered. But because I use the phrase mental illness you get all needlessly wound up." If you said that diabetes was the cause of someone's terrorist actions, you'd look extremely stupid. But you haven't provided any argument as to why mental illness is any more of a cause of terrorism than diabetes. "It is just another illness, and no need for people to be ashamed of it or embarrassed about it, or overly sensitive about it, as you appear to be." I'm not sensitive about mental illness. I'm sensitive about your baseless suggestion that mental illness is the reason why people commit acts of political and religious violence. Anyway, no hard feelings.

No hard feelings Buk