Strikingly the process of Scriptural interpretation is very similar across violent religious groups. For example, throughout the Left Behind series so popular among American apocalyptic Christians, the protagonists continually justify their actions by reference to individual Bible verses, or sometimes even just bits of verses or phrases. Almost always these textual bits are cited without any reference to their context. The assumption here appears to be that the Bible is a repository of concepts and images that are independent and autonomous and can be taken out of their larger textual or narrative context and treated as isolated slogans or bits of wisdom. The same thing happens with other religiously motivated terrorist movements. For example, many commentators have pointed out that when jihadists quote the Koran to justify terrorist actions and the killing of civilians (things most Muslim scholars agree are against Koranic principles), they almost always take passages out of context, ignoring either the texts’ immediate context or the larger message of the Koran taken as a whole. There is one kind of jihadi video that consists of single, violence-oriented Koranic phrases chanted to music or repeated over and over by an iconic figure like Bin Laden or Zarquawi or a would-be martyr sometimes with scenes of battle playing in the background. Often these texts are re-grouped around themes like the obligation of jihad or the lure of paradise. Likewise the Army of God website is covered with Biblical verses with no context such as “cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood (Jeremiah 48: 10), or “surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God” (Psalm 139: 19), and “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance done: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked” (Psalm 58: 10). This site also contains a statement by Eric Rudolph who was responsible for several women’s health clinic bombings, the bombing of a gay club, and the bomb that exploded at the Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. His statement is captioned “Psalm 144: 1: Blessed be the LORD my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight”.

 

Likewise with the violent Israeli settler movement in the occupied territories of Palestine. After the 6-day war when Israel continued to occupy the west bank, justification for that occupation had to be found. No United Nations mandate gave them title to that land. Such occupations are illegal in International Law, the “might makes right” philosophy has been discredited for generations. The only justifications for the occupation could found by taking references to ancient Israel in the book of Exodus and applying them to the modern secular state. These deconxtextualized fragments from the Torah are now the basis for occupation, oppression, and warfare.

 

Scholars have said the same thing about Asahara’s (the founder of Aum Shinrikyo which released sarin gas in the Tokyo subways) use of texts from the Tibetan Tantras: that in order to justify his violent and apocalyptic teachings Asahara either took texts out of context or interpreted passages literally that were meant to be interpreted symbolically. The same is true of the way the authors of the Left Behind series treat the New Testament. In none of these cases are these scriptural texts or fragments discussed in terms of their historical or linguistic context or their place in traditional commentaries. Rather they are simply flung at the reader or viewer. Such a style of interpretation and the concomitant assumption that a sacred text can be treated as simply a collection of independent textual fragments to be combined and recombined in any way that suits the ideology of the speaker seems to characterize the use of sacred texts on the part of violence prone religionists.

 

This is part of a larger point: while violent religious groups always claim to represent the most traditional and conservative viewpoint; their understanding of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc is always a very narrow and limited representation of the greater traditions. What the historian Martin Marty calls in a telling phrase the “selective retrieval of tradition.” For example, this narrow and literalistic understanding of sacred texts is hardly traditional. Literalistic approaches to scripture are a distinctly modern, post-enlightenment phenomenon. Ironically these groups that are often portrayed as anti-modern (which is true only in a very limited sense if at all) represent a very modern understanding of how language functions and knowledge is constructed. And, of course, the contents they derive from scripture, as well as their processes of interpretation, almost always represent modern concerns that were unknown to the texts’ original authors and commentators. It is only because the global society, and especially North America and Europe, has secularized so rapidly (and also because of these groups sophisticated manipulation and control of the mass media) that these groups can get away with claiming to represent the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Hinduism, etc when clearly don’t. Wrapping themselves in a very gauzy mantle of “traditionalism” or “conservatism” should not obscure their “selective retrieval.”  

 

Besides texts and stories that describe and sanctify violence which all these groups reiterate over and over, another of the most striking things about this material is that the same issues are common to the writings of religious terrorists across many different religious traditions. Their societies are seen as ruled by anti-religious leaders who may claim to be Jewish, Christian, or Muslim but really are not. The scriptural texts that are focused on are primarily the legal texts of their sacred scriptures. Religion is defined in primarily legal terms, as a divine law, the capitalized “Moral Law” in Paul Hill’s (the murderer of a physician and guard at a woman’s health center) writings – the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, the Koran, even the Buddhist Sutras are understood as books of rules, laws. A divine mission to impose this law on the whole society and replace secular or hypocritical leaders with devout leaders is proclaimed. As I've noted before, this is why religious terrorists reject the separation of church, synagogue, mosque or ashram and the state. Their religion requires of them that all aspects of life — from laws governing capital crimes to women’s clothing and children’s discipline — be subject to religious control. And the prominent issues in this divine mandate are also similar across traditions:  the “proper” roles of men and women, the regulation of sex, ending abortion and homosexuality. Texts that discuss or can be made to discuss such issues are lifted out and made prominent.

 

The important point is that these very same issues  – an abhorrence of the materialism and individualism of the west, its lack of spirituality, its sexualized culture, its blurring of traditional gender roles and the emasculation of its men, and its tolerance for homosexuality – are found in the writings of religiously motivated terrorists whether they are living in settlements in the occupied territories on the West Bank, in the Taliban camps in Afghanistan, or in the Christian enclaves in rural America.

           

            This brief discussion of the role of scripture reveals one very, very important point about contemporary religiously motivated terrorism—that religiously motivated terrorists groups share many, many common features regardless of the traditions they come from. In addition: religious terrorists emphasize shame and humiliation, dichotomizes the world into warring camps of the all-good against the totally evil, demonize those with whom they disagree and foment crusades against them, advocate violence and blood sacrifice as the primary means of purification, seek to placate or be unified with a punitive and humiliating  idealized divine figure or institution, offer theological justifications for violent acts, and promote prejudice and authoritarian behavior. Sacred texts are then twisted and reconfigured to fit within and support such a theology.

 

Consider the following questions: Is a jihad to re-establish the caliphate and impose Shi’ria Law on the civilizations of the world a religious or political movement? Are conquering the land necessary to recreate the boundaries of “Biblical Israel,” blowing up the Mosque on the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding Herod’s Temple, and imposing the Mosaic Law on Israelite society religious or political goals? Is organizing a movement to use democratic means, law suits, and occasional acts of violence and intimidation in order to turn the United States into a theocracy run by Evangelical Christians a religious or political undertaking?   

        

        It seems obvious to me that in these, any many other examples (Hindu Nationalism, for example) religion and politics cannot be separated. Debating whether religious motivated terrorism is really politics or religion is to misunderstand the nature of these movements. Western academic culture, from which most scholars of terrorism, pundits, and policy makers come, is a culture of disciplinary specialization. This culture of disciplinary specialization is thus imposed on these movements. But they represent a very different ethos in which precisely these compartmentalizations are anathema.

  

        In addition, this mingling of religion and politics in religiously motivated terrorism, underscores another important dimension of this issue with which policy makers in the West have hardly begun to come to terms. Such political religiosity, violent or simply politically militant, reveals that large numbers of people around the world (and within American society) are convinced that God has given them the single master-plan for how societies should be organized and governed. Since these blueprints come from God, it is the true believers’ sacred duty to follow them to the letter and even to impose them on the societies in which they live. And since they are a divine mandate, these master-plans cannot be compromised. Liberal democracies, based on the value of individual rights and government by negotiation and compromise, have not yet to even begin to find a way to address these citizens and their convictions.

 

            This is another potential contribution of religion to terrorist actions: the idea that certain devotees possess a divine mandate for their societies and for the whole world. This comes through clearly in many of bin Laden’s statements. For example, bin Laden’s 2001 message to the Muslim youth: “The time has come when all the Muslims of the world, especially the youth, should unite and soar against the kufr [nonbeliever] and continue jihad till those forces are crushed to naught, all the anti-Islamic forces are wiped off the face of the earth and Islam takes over the whole world and all other false religions”. Bin Laden’s statements and those of other jihadists make clear that their goal is not simply defeating the west militarily or driving the “crusaders” from the Muslim holy lands. Their goal is nothing less than replacing secular governments with those that follow strict Muslim law throughout the Middle East and maybe even throughout the globe.  A mujihadeen in Pakistan described the goal of jihad by saying “Our mission is to invite all of humanity to Islam, to persuade the whole world to worship only Allah…Islam is not just a religion. It regulates every aspect of life, including politics. We would like to see implementation of divine laws here.”  In the same way, the ultra-orthodox parties in Israel seek to remove the current secular government and establish instead a government by strict orthodox law.

 

The same goal of replacing secular government with a strictly religious one is also articulated by the Christian Reconstructionist movement in the United States. Reconstructionism’s goal is turning the United States into a theocratic state governed by the imposition of "Biblical Law" on all US citizens. This would be the end of democracy, labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be confined to the home. Non-Christians would be deprived of citizenship. Reconstructionism seeks to make the laws found in the books of Moses the basis for transforming society into the Kingdom of God on earth.  The assumption is that the Bible is the ruling law for all areas of life — such as government, education, law, and the arts — an assumption shared by ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel in regards the Torah and Muslim jihadists in regards to the Koran.

 

These teachings are often taken up by Christian terrorists in the United States. Paul Hill, who killed a physician in Florida,  says directly that “My worldview is based on Reconstruction principles.” Hill wrote from prison “The primary function of government is to uphold the Moral Law with the sword,”. Hill makes it clear that his agenda goes beyond simply ending abortion, he looks forward to nothing less than the transformation of American society: “Sooner or later America will become a Christian nation. Only Christians will be elected to public office. No false worship allowed.”  Neal Horsely, another advocate of killing physicians who perform abortions and creator of the Nuremburg Files, has on his present website mainly pages devoted to calling for the overthrow of the present government and the establishment of a “Christian Commonwealth” based primarily on imposing the laws found in the Books of Moses on Americans.

Common to religious terrorists across many different religious traditions is a divine mission to impose religious law on the whole society and replace secular or hypocritical leaders with devout leaders. This is why religious terrorists reject the separation of church, synagogue, or mosque and the state. Their religion requires of them that all aspects of life — from laws governing capital crimes to women’s clothing and children’s discipline — be subject to religious control. And one of the most striking things is that the prominent issues in this divine mandate are exactly the same across all the traditions:  the “proper” roles of men and women, the regulation of sex, ending abortion and homosexuality. And not just for them in their personal lives but for whole societies, for their God-given mission demands that they bring all of society under theocratic control. This understanding of the divine mandate is shared by Christian Reconstructionists, Muslim jihadists, ultra-orthodox Jews, and groups like Aum Shinrikyo and the Hindu nationalist party as well. Whether such a divine mission can co-exist with liberal democracy may be the major religious and political debate of the twenty-first century.

            I have suggested that there are a minimum of three conditions for religiously motivated terrorism to take place: a population that has experienced humiliation, either personally or by “proxy” (as Khosrokhavar refers to it); a tactical group able to train and deploy a potential terrorist; and, finally, a religious justification for committing a heinous act. To the third of these we now turn.

            Despite Homo sapiens’ long history of violence and bloodshed, there is some evidence that killing other human beings is not natural. Rather (except for the criminally insane) we all have a certain natural inhibition against the premeditated killing of others of our own species. And certainly civilization aims at reinforcing and strengthening this inhibition. The result is that most people have to be carefully taught to kill and have to be trained to engage in mass murder. 

Part of such training is what the psychologist Albert Bandura calls “moral disengagement.”  Here individuals become desensitized to the heinousness of their actions. Given that the majority of terrorists are not psychopathological and that normal people have inhibitions against killing other human beings, such inhibitions must be disengaged in order for psychologically normal people to become terrorists.  Human tendencies toward empathy and compassion are “disengaged” by, among other means, (1) framing killing as morally justified and (2) dehumanizing the victims and blaming them for the harm done to them.

Most people need a moral justification before they will voluntarily engage in mass murder. Redefining the morality of killing is almost always necessary here.  Religious ethics and doctrines can be powerful means of overcoming the moral and psychological mechanisms that inhibit people from killing and maiming others and so enable them to engage in horrific violence. Religion is probably the most power method of reframing immoral conduct into a moral imperative by providing a theological rationale for it. Theology endues extraordinary violence with meaning, purpose, and morality and transforms terrorist deed into divine mission,

Redefining the morality of killing is only one of the links in the chain of radicalization by which ordinary people turn into terrorists. Dehumanization of the victim is another crucial mechanism by which terrorism becomes normalized. Religion is perhaps the most powerful force in desensitizing devotees to the humanity of the other and thus creating the moral disengagement necessary for terrorism. Envisioning the world as a cosmic battleground between completely good forces and the forces of pure evil appears as one major theme in the worldview of religious fanatics and terrorists. This belief serves what psychologist James Waller calls “the social death of the victim,”  dehumanizing the victims by seeing them as Satanic. This demonizing and dehumanizing of the other is one of the most potent ways in which religion promotes terrorism.

Traditionally these processes take place through extensive training in an authoritarian milieu. But current examples such as the formation of radical jihadist cliques in Europe suggest that this may also happen more spontaneously, without the heavy hand of a group leader or trainer, but rather through reading religious literature on one’s own, listening to sermons on tape or over the Internet, discussions with friends. No direct contact with a leader or trainer is necessary. While secular groups and criminal gangs can also engage these psychological processes, religion appears as the most powerful site of this conversion of normal, civilized persons into trained killers because of its power to justify killing and dehumanize victims.           

The second necessary condition for religiously motivated terrorism is a group that can recruit and train any potential terrorists. There are occasional lone wolves. And as more sophisticated tactical and technical information becomes available on the Internet, there may well be an increase in lone wolves, since they can find the information needed to carry out an action without having to affiliate with any group. That would be a law enforcement nightmare.

            But must terrorist actions, even individual acts like suicide bombing or killing a physician or a political leader, require group organization, planning, and support. And certainly actions done in the name of an international movement like jihad, or Aryan nationalism, or re-establishing biblical Israel are actions carried out by groups that recruit actors and supporters, obtain weapons, and coordinate complex maneuvers. Without such networks, alienated or humiliated individuals would remain frustrated and caught up in fantasies and day-dreams of heroic acts with no real means of carrying them out.       

There appear at present two major routes to membership in such groups. One route is when an already formed social network turns more fanatical. Members of an extended family, a neighborhood sports team, a study group at a mosque, church, or synagogue or other such naturally occurring social networks are examples of the kinds of networks that have turned militant. In the case of the jihad this is often referred to as the “third-wave” of the international jihad. The “first wave” was the group around Bin Laden who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan; the “second wave” were those who actively joined al-Qaeda and were directly trained by members of the “first wave” in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like the 9/11 hijackers; the “third wave” are recruited primarily from the Muslim diaspora in Europe and tend to be less well-educated than the previous two groups. They tend to convert to the jihad in groups as members of already established social networks. [I am indebted to Dr. Marc Sageman for this schema of “three waves” of the jihad.]

            Another route is thru individuals who self-radicalize. In many ways joining a contemporary religiously motivated terrorist group parallels the more general process of religious conversion. In this context conversion can mean either converting to a new religion or converting to a more militant and violent form of the religion one was raised in (moderate Moslems in Europe becoming takfuri or ex-Methodists joining a “Christian Identity Group” in the USA). Conversion has been a central topic of research in the psychology of religion for a century. Such research can also cast some light on the process of terrorist conversion.

            Religious conversion involves a transformation of the self and it joins the individual to something greater than their own ego, giving them a sense of meaning and purpose and a source of values to live by. Conversion is a comprehensive personal change of worldview and identity and so is different from simple religious recruitment where a person joins a new religious group without a real rupture in relation to his previous life or significant change in world-view or behavior. Such “conversion narratives” figure prominently in the lives of several contemporary European and American jihadis, as well as members of the violent religious right in America.

            In the past, in discussing conversion, social scientists invoked categories like “brain-washing” and “thought reform” and claimed that unsuspecting young adults are coerced into signing up with unscrupulous “cults.” Such claims regarding people who most generally joined groups voluntarily have been severely criticized recently and few current researchers accept them regarding religious conversion but such language is still heard in certain counter-terrorism circles. I am skeptical of its usefulness.   

            Such models theorize the individual as passive and as simply moved around by social forces. In fact, most religious conversions are self-initiated and the end result of a spiritual search or struggle that the individual voluntarily undertakes on their own. This also appears true of those Muslims living in the diaspora who find their own way to radical mosques or to jihadist websites on the Internet. Conversion as currently understood is a process in which the convert is actively seeking the conversion experience to resolve life difficulties. For example, a recent study of contemporary French converts to Islam found the most predominate motif was a striving to improve the self and gain self-knowledge.

            Group process models of conversion apply best to tight-knit religious cults and terrorist groups (the Unification Church, the IRA, the Red Brigades, etc) where there is a structured process of recruitment, initiation, training, and eventual deployment. But contemporary terrorism is more likely the result of rapidly evolving “leaderless groups” or “self-starters” in which there is little overt recruitment and much of the training is done over the internet or in small cliques.  Al-Qaeda boasts it has more volunteers than it can use and the Aryan Nation, rather than sending out recruiters, on its website calls for local, self-organized groups. In such loose confederations of the like-minded, often self-forming over the Internet, classical models of social influence may lose some of their explanatory power.   

Conversion experiences resulting in group membership serve as the solution to an identity crisis. That is one of the reasons they most commonly occur during adolescence and early adulthood when issues of identity are predominate. In the anomie of our post-modern, global society with its smorgasbord of options and life-styles, a religious conversion provides clear norms, a prefabricated answer to the post-modern dilemma of “who am I,” and a sense of rootedness in a timeless tradition that transcends and feels more substantial than the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of contemporary communities of reference.  Thus it has particular appeal to the young Muslim men in the immigrant communities of Europe and to alienated youth in the United States as well.

Whether periods of crisis or a personal struggle precedes conversion experiences remains unresolved. A major problem with studies that emphasize a preceding personal crisis is that few contain a control group so it is not clear if such turmoil is a characteristic of a certain age cohort whether they convert or not. Relatively few people who report significant stress in their life end up experiencing a conversion. However, most converts tell of a major life stress before their conversion. But some studies have found little or no evidence of a crises or conflict prior to conversion and stress instead that people just “drift” into new religious groups. So there are clearly many paths to a new religious identity.

Research is also clear that the vast majority of those who are in distress, even those who are “spiritual seekers,” attending meetings and reading literature, do not end up joining a new religious movement. Before 9/11, not every alienated Muslim in Germany joined a fanatical Mosque. And not everyone who joined a fanatical Mosque journeyed to a training camp in Afghanistan or Uzbekistan. And not everyone who went to these camps pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. And not everyone who joined al-Qaeda actually volunteered for a martyrdom mission on 9/11 or afterward. So individual factors also play a role and cannot be ruled out in understanding terrorist conversions. Rather, I think, we must think in terms of an individual-group interaction in our understanding of such conversions.

Current research insists that for those who do join a new group, such a conversion is a process. Even conversions that on the surface appear most spontaneous, when they are unpacked in a careful interview, always have some antecedent event or process leading up to them.  Many converts to the jihad in Europe spent time reading jihadi literature, visiting jihadi websites, and attending discussion groups in the mosque. For example this was true of Fritz Gelowicz in Germany and the two men who turned out to be leaders of the Madrid cell.

While conversion often begins as a self-directed search, an encounter with another person or persons is almost always a significant factor in the conversion process. Such interpersonal activity appears crucial to a religious conversion. An important contemporary question is, Is this possible over the internet?

            Given the importance of the Internet to contemporary terrorism, it is interesting that I could not find any studies of online conversions per se. But there is a large body of research that demonstrates that online interaction generates a full “social world” complete with passion, commitment, dependency, trust, a shared vision, and mutual responsibility. Which can result in the formation of a new identity. Research demonstrates that participation in Internet groups can powerfully influence one’s self and identity. And that when people disengage from online groups, they go through much the same processes as when disengaging from face to face communities. Like conversions in general, joining a new social world online is usually the result of individual curiosity, interest, and a self-directed search. People are not simply, passively drawn in or seduced (or “brainwashed”) by online groups. Seekers take the initiative, explore, and consider online communities just as much as face-to-face communities. Here too joining is a choice. So the process of identifying with an online social world is quite parallel to the process of conversion to a new religious world, especially given the contemporary understanding of conversion as a process.

            However there is an additional element as well. Research suggests that the anonymity of the internet impacts the dynamics of group formation there. Such anonymity may be disinhibiting and allow people to express more extreme and unpopular sentiments and experiment with more radical identities. The number of websites advocating violence and containing information on obtaining weapons and making bombs has grown and researchers report that in many of these sites there is active encouragement for members to act on their violent ideas So we must take seriously the reality that people convert to the jihad or militant Christian groups or to settler Judaism wholly online and receive encouragement and advice there to translate violent belief into violent action. Rather than denigrating converts as passive victims of “brain washing” and “manipulation,” it is more realistic to look out for a reciprocal, individual-group interaction effect between an open and receptive person and a group looking for converts.

            The salient themes in the stories of individual converts to militant, fundamentalist, and even terrorist religions groups include: 1. the search for a new identity often in adolescence, while some evidence suggests that conversions to Islam in the West happen somewhat later, in early adulthood rather than adolescence; 2. a subject who often begins the conversion process as a self-directed spiritual search;  3. the intervention of an “advocate” or a group (either in person or increasingly online) who points the potential convert in a certain direction; thus there is a reciprocal  individual-group interaction effect between an open and receptive person and a group looking for converts; 4. the central role of the internet in contemporary religiously motivated terrorism. 

            Some join terrorist groups as the direct result of humiliation and alienation; others join as members of a kinship or social network that is moving in that directions; others in an attempt to find a new identity; others in a search to transform themselves and find meaning and purpose for their lives; and others out of some combination of all these motivations. In any case it is usually group membership (in person or on line) that turns individual motivation and desire into deadly action.

[Note for references and more information, see the paper “Converting to Terrorism” available on this website]

The two greatest group humiliations of the modern age produced the two greatest movements of genocide and terrorism in the modern world: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire along with the imposition of European colonialism on the Arab world and the rise of the jihad; and the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War and the appeal of Nazism in Germany.

 

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire ended trans-national Muslim rule and represented a tremendous loss of power and prestige by the followers of Mohammed. This was soon followed by the force of European colonialism that subjected and further humiliated the Arabic world. The failure of secular nationalism to create a pan-Muslim civilization and return it to power further humiliated the Muslim world. And the Muslim world’s inability to influence world events was further exemplified by the imposition of the state of Israel without any negotiations with Arab leaders and their defeat in the 1967 war. These collective humiliations still cast a shadow over the Muslim world and are an important background for the rise of militant and violent Islamic groups who seek to restore the ancient caliphate and with it the pride and power of the Muslim civilization. Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual forefather of the jihadi movement, insists on the moral and spiritual superiority of the past Muslim civilization and that the Muslim world has nothing to learn from a decadent West. Rather this glorious past must be restored by the use of violence. Bin Laden’s speeches make clear he too desires to undo the humiliation of the Muslim world at the hands of the “crusaders” and restore it to greatness through violence. Virtually all the interviews I have seen with jihadis and recruits to fanatical Muslim groups in Europe and the Middle East have mentioned humiliation. The same is true of many interviews with members of Christian Identity and White Supremacist groups in the United States.

 

The Treaty of Versailles, which was imposed on Germany as punishment for the First World War, removed all its colonies from German control, laid on it onerous sanctions, and demanded its disarmament. All of these had been sources of pride and their loss was a total humiliation. These humiliations along with the virtual collapse of the weak Weimar government and the German economy laid the groundwork for Hitler’s rise to power. German veterans returning to a defeated and destabilized nation reported such feelings as “as a Front-fighter the collapse of the Fatherland in November 1918 was to me completely incomprehensible,” or “a great hopelessness was in me,” or “I had believed adamantly in Germany’s invincibility and now I only saw the country in its deepest humiliation—the entire world fell to the ground.” People holding such sentiments became the core of the Nazi movement. National humiliation caused by military defeat, internal political weakness, and economic collapse had at least two disastrous results for Germany and for the rest of the world: it set off a furious search for scapegoats, for some one or some group to blame and to punish for all this suffering; and it unleashed a ferocious drive to undo the humiliation by defeating those who had humiliated Germany. Many citizens were vulnerable to someone who could explain which group was to blame and could offer a way to overcome the humiliation. That person was obviously Adolph Hitler who pointed the finger of responsibility at Jews and other “non-Aryans” and had a plan to restore German prominence through military conquest. 

 

These two historical examples make clear that a nation, a trans-national group, or a sub-group within a society who experiences profound humiliation is exceedingly vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment into movements and cultures of violence.

[My special thanks to Professor David Redles who supplied the examples from WWI German veterans who became Nazis and Professor Charles Strozier and Dr. David Terman with whom I have had many productive discussions on the role of humiliation in violent, apocalyptic movements.]

There are at least three social-historical preconditions that are necessary for the rise of movements of religiously motivated terrorism. Each one deserves a discussion on its own, which they will receive here in the future.

            The first precondition is a group that experiences itself as shamed and humiliated. Forensic psychologists have long emphasized the significance of shame and humiliation as precursors for violent acts. Feelings of humiliation are also cited as a major cause of the turn to religious fanaticism and violence on the part of groups around the world. A fine introduction to this research and discussion can be found in the book Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict by Evelin Lindner and on the website www.humiliationstudies.org.

            The second precondition is a community of violence: a group knowledgeable about the production of violent acts, that knows how to procure and/or manufacture weapons, train agents in their use, and to think and plan tactically about their deployment. The contemporary variation on this theme is the question of the extent to which the recruitment, training, and deployment of such agents can be carried on entirely over the Internet.

            The third precondition is a religious leadership that articulates an appealing and convincing rationale for committing violent actions: a theology that frames violent acts as God’s will or sacred duty, that endows violence with a transcendent meaning, that dichotomizes the human race into two absolutely opposed camps of the totally pure and righteous eternally at war with those who are totally impure and demonic, that teaches a God of anger and vengeance, that ties redemption and purification to the shedding of blood.

            All three are necessary and work synergistically. Without an alienated or humiliated group, there would be few potential recruits. Without a community of violence, those predisposed to violence would have little ability to act on a large scale. At most there would be a few lone wolves carrying out simple, small-scale acts. Without a transcendental rational there would be difficulty recruiting and motivating large numbers to engage in horrific actions.              In addition to these social-historical preconditions, there is also the individual-psychological precondition of persons whose psychological make-up predisposes them to respond to humiliation with rage, to be fascinated with violence, and to resonate to a theology of terror and vengeance. Without individuals predisposed in those ways, the most compelling message of terror would gather few followers.

            All three of these social-historical conditions will receive more detailed analysis here in the coming weeks.

There is a disagreement going on in the scholarly literature between two of this country’s leading scholars of terrorism—Dr. Marc Sagemen and Professor Bruce Hoffman—that tells us much about the contemporary terrorist threat. [Complete disclosure requires that I report that, while I do not know Dr. Sageman personally, he and I are both associated with the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College in New York.] Dr. Sageman has written two important books—Understanding Terror Networks and Leaderless Jihad—that emphasize the significance of “local groups…conceiving and executing operations from the bottom up. These “homegrown” wannabes form a scattered global network, a leaderless jihad” (the quote is from the opening paragraph of Leaderless Jihad). Professor Hoffman wrote a scathing critique of Leaderless Jihad, arguing that Dr. Sageman was downplaying, if not dismissing, the threat from a centralized al Qaeda and offering only a single account of the multi-layered and diverse reality that is contemporary terrorism. I am not going to take sides in this dispute, which continued with a response by Dr. Sageman and another reply by Professor Hoffman. All of this in the pages of the 2008 edition of the journal Foreign Affairs.

Rather I want to point out two things that this debate reveals about the current state of the terrorist threat. First, the role of the Internet has become a crucial element for understanding terrorism today, something virtually every current scholar acknowledges. The US invasion of Afghanistan destroyed al Qaeda’s training camps and base of operations and at the same time international, cooperative counter-terrorism efforts significantly disrupted their flow of money. That put an end to al Qaeda as a top-down, tightly managed organization, at least temporary. That might have meant the end of al-Qaeda itself except that at exactly the same time, the world wide web was going world wide. Now loose local confederations of radicalized Muslims (and other terrorist groups) throughout the world could maintain contact, exchange information, trade inflammatory images, raise funds, network, and all the other activities central to terrorist planning through chat-rooms, emails, text messages, and websites. No command and control from bin Laden and company is necessary. Thus jidhadism and radical apocalyptic Christianity (to take just two examples) morphed into a “leaderless resistance” or a movement of autonomous “self-starters.” That is Dr. Sageman’s point.

Second, more recently there is much evidence to suggest that “al Qaeda central” is regrouping in the tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border and that it is, or soon will be, capable of the long-range planning of complex and dramatic attacks. That is Professor Hoffman’s point. So, from my perspective, as we look forward in a few years to the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we face the worst of both worlds. We face a threat of complicated and dramatic attacks from a regrouped al Qaeda. And we face a threat of small, tight-knit, nearly impossible to infiltrate, groups carrying out local, but still very deadly, attacks as well.

    

    There’s saying in Buddhism that goes “If you meet a Buddha on the road, kill him”—In other words, do not over-idealize an enlightened being or religious figure. On the other hand, if you meet a “terrorism expert,” please don’t kill him or her. We need all the help we can get. But you might run the other way. Or, at least, listen to him or her very critically.

    Why do I say this?

    Contemporary terrorism is an exceeding complex, multi-dimensional, multi-determined phenomenon. No one person can be an “expert” in all that is involved now. Perhaps in the 60’s and 70’s when most terrorist groups (in the West at least) were politically oriented, local, tightly and hierarchically organized, relatively compact, and possessing primarily small arms — like the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, and perhaps the Weather Underground in the USA and IRA in Ireland — a person could really be a “terrorism expert.”  Twenty-first century, religiously motivated, global, internet driven terrorism seeking WMD’s is another matter. For example: now we need experts in physics, biology, and public health who are also knowledgeable about international relations to help us assess the chances of nuclear or biological attack and how to prevent it. As well as how to screen cargo arriving in our ports. But such experts will not help us figure out how to deal with al-Qaeda in Waziristan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. Experts on strategy and tactics, with on the ground experience in the Middle East, can advise us on military planning. But they will not be much help to local police figuring out the role of community policing in counter-terrorism. And, if counter-terrorism now really is a “war of ideas” (as President Bush said in a speech right after 9/11), then we also need those who understand our opponents’ ideas and how to counter them effectively.

    My advice is this: Today, beware of the person who claims a generalized “terrorism” expertise. Beware of the person who claims that he or she has discovered the one key that will unlock our knowledge of contemporary terrorism.  Pay attention to the person who is knowledgeable but also humble about the limits of what he or she knows and who is willing to listen to others as well.

    In addition to experts in the fields most directly related to contemporary terrorism, counter-terrorism planning  should also include input from smart people whoever they are — physicians, English teachers, amateur historians, etc and etc. I don’t like the cliché “thinking outside the box.” What box? But we need people who can see an issue from many different perspectives and can point out what is being ignored and overlooked. I read somewhere that wartime Britain’s strategic planning included people from a wide range of fields who were able to think with flexibility and imagination. Thus Britain remained relatively responsive to changing circumstances and more supple than if all her policies were dictated by top-down layers of narrow or ideologically driven “expertise.”

     If that’s true, there is a lesson here.