A London politician said British men who join ISIS are just porn-obsessed losers looking for an ego boost.
The “tortured” men turn to jihad because they lack purpose and self-esteem, and can’t get a girlfriend, London Mayor Boris Johnson told the Sun in a recent interview. “They are just young men in desperate need of self-esteem who do not have a particular mission in life, who feel that they are losers and this thing makes them feel strong – like winners.”
“They are not making it with girls and so they turn to other forms of spiritual comfort, which of course is no comfort,” he added. Johnson, who is a leading candidate to be the next Tory leader, referenced an MI5 profile on jihadis as evidence for his claims.
“If you look at all the psychological profiling about bombers, they typically will look at porn,” he said. “They are literally wankers. Severe onanists.”
He said the best way to ensure more British men don’t volunteer to be martyred for Islam is to give them a job.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesperson told The Guardian Johnson has an “ever lovely turn of phrase,” but declined to say whether Cameron agrees with Johnson’s comments.
“The whole thing is ludicrous,” Charlie Winter told The Guardian on behalf of the Quilliam Foundation, an organization started by ex-Islamists to counter extremism. “To imply that they don’t have social skills is again a generalization … that has no evidence behind it. They are integrated, many of them are very well educated.”
Johnson told Sky News Friday his comments were not “remotely controversial.”
The crucial thing is that these are young men, principally young men who are growing up without much sense of success in their lives, without a feeling that the world holds much for them,” he said. “And … their problems need addressing in all sorts of ways.”
He also took heat in August for the way he disparaged the ISIS member who killed American journalist James Foley. “I suspect most of us don’t give a monkey’s what happens to this prat in heaven, whether he meets virgins or raisins,” he wrote in a column for The Daily Telegraph. “We just want someone to come along with a bunker buster and effect an introduction as fast as possible.”
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