Edited to add this note:
I am in no way comparing extremist Islamic sects to GC. I am trying to point out the possibility of authoritarian parenting and focus on obedience may make children susceptible to extremist groups. That's it... nothing further!I woke up today to this:
After graduating from University College London in 2008, and abandoning a master's degree course in Dubai, Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen, against his parents' wishes, to learn Arabic and deepen his knowledge of Islam.
That's where he apparently cut ties with his family. After he sent a text message to his father to say he had found real Islam, Alhaji Mutallab alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and the local security agencies to report his son's alarming behavior and increasingly hard-line views.
Mutallab woke up on Dec. 26, 2009, to see Abdulmutallab's image on the television. His son had been arrested in the U.S. for allegedly trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
Wow. He joined a cult. This reminds me of when Steve Hassan (cult exit counselor who was with the Moonies) said that when he saw the planes on September 11, he realized that he had once been so extreme in his beliefs that if he would have been asked to crash into the WTC, he could have done that.
Mutallab's friend and brother-in-law, Mahmoon Baba-Ahmed, called the father a "puritan."
"[He] inculcated self-discipline in a puritan manner to his children," Baba-Ahmed says, "to never create any situation that will warrant or allow his children to go astray or to behave indecently."
I found this at the beginning of the article. I firmly believe that the demand for instant obedience and not allowing children any room to think for themselves, while focusing on a "puritanical" expression of faith is setting the framework for children who wish to be devout to become radicals. This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. I realized that my childhood desire to be "right", "good", and to have approval, completely set the framework for me to be duped. Luckily my parents also encouraged study and thinking so I was able to finally see the errors, but in GC thinking and study outside of GC approved methods is discouraged. So kids raised in the movement may never see the truth if they are never allowed to question.
In Join Us (I really recommend watching that), Paul Martin states the same thing. If obedience is the most important thing you are teaching your kids... WATCH OUT!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123646982
