Danish Psychiatrist Henrik Day Poulsen: Jihadis Are Not Psychopaths But Merely True Believers

The Jihad, or struggle, using whatever instruments prove most effective at the time and place, to remove all obstacles to the spread of Islam,until everywhere Islam dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere, is a duty incumbent on all Muslims. The Jihad of “pen, tongue” (propaganda), the Jihad of wealth (which includes bribery and business contracts and employment by Muslim and Arab interests), the Jihad of open combat (qitaal), the Jihad of terrorism, and the Jihad, the newest form (demographics) made available because the Western world forgot what Islam was all about, as it had not for 1400 years, and allowed into its midst many millions of Muslims, who brought with them, undeclared in their mental baggage, Islam itself — all these are varieties of Jihad. Those who in the West are called “Jihadis” are the ones who use violence to promote what they see as the Cause of Islam. They are not crazy, though many in the West comfort themselves with this notion, because if they are not crazy, if they are only True Believers who take theiir Islam undiluted by short-term considerations of self-interest, if they are the truest and best emulators of Muhammad and the earliest Muslims, then the Western world has a problem that some deem impossible of solution, and this for some leads to despair, and so they prefer to ignore reality. 

The Danish psychiatrist Poulsen prefers reality. He understands that while the problem is not one that can be solved, the dimensions of that problem can be reduced to manageable size (it’s akin to dealing with climate change) if, in time, people take the necessary drastic measures. Poulsen  has understood that the “Jihadis” — that is those we call, somewhat inaccurately, “fundamentalists” (a term taken from the history of Protestant Christianity, and one that ill describes the situation in Islam, where all Bellievers are literalists, all are fundamentalists, and the only difference is in the degree of dilution of that Belief by other considerations, and the degree of commitment to that duy, that is the willingness to fight and die as the surest and most effective means of Jihad, and of ending in the Mohammedan Heaven).