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WORKING DRAFT: Please do not cite without permission of the author
SACRED TERROR:
RELIGION AND CONTEMPORARY TERRORISM
James W. Jones, Psy.D., Ph.D., Th.D.
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
Center on Terrorism, John Jay College, New York City
[Note: This paper contains copyrighted material and is not to be reproduced beyond the PCR group without the author’s written permission. References and further information are available at www.bloodthatcriesout.com]
In the early months of the year 2001 I completed a book entitled Terror and Transformation: The Ambiguity of Religion In a Psychoanalytic Perspective. Because it had the word Terror in the title and came out around the time of 9/11, I have been swept up into a vortex of discussions about religion and terrorism. A topic I find extremely foreign to my experience and very aversive. Also, like many in the New York metropolitan area, 9/11 still casts a longer shadow over my life (in ways that I still find hard to talk about) than the World Trade Towers ever cast when they stood erect over lower Manhattan. As much as I wanted to escape from these discussions, I have been unable to. So here I am.
In the months following 9/11 I often heard demagogues on the radio say that psychologists (like me) who seek to understand the psychology behind religiously motivated violence simply want to “offer the terrorists therapy.” The idea that one must choose either understanding or action — that one cannot do both — is an idea that itself borders on the pathological and represents the kind of dichotomizing that I will demonstrate is itself a part of the terrorist mindset. Such dichotomized thinking, wherever it occurs, is a part of the problem and not part of the solution. So that I am not misunderstood on this point, remember that I worked for two years in the psychology department at a hardcore, maximum security prison. I certainly did offer the rapists and killers and muggers therapy. But I never thought of that as a substitute for just and vigorous law enforcement. And I have also worked as a psychologist with police officers and veterans. Understanding an action in no way means excusing it; explaining an action in no way means condoning it.
It is a symptom of how fractious and volatile the discourse around terrorism —and especially religious terrorism — has become that I must state the obvious and say as unequivocally as possible that, despite the fact that all the religions of the world have done it, the use of violence against civilians and non-combatants is condemned in all the world’s religions. The targeting of non-combatants, civilians going about their daily lives, and children can never be justified no matter how lofty or sacred the cause is held to be. Nothing I going to say should heard as saying anything other than that.
There is, however, a deeper issue here. Understanding others (even those who will your destruction) can make them more human. It can break down the demonization of the other that some politicians and policy makers feel is necessary in order to combat terrorists. The demonization of the other is a major weapon in the arsenal of the religiously motivated terrorist. Must we resort to the same tactic – which is so costly psychologically and spiritually – in order to oppose terrorism? Or can we counter religiously motivated terrorists without becoming like them?
We must keep in mind that there is no one psychology of religious terrorists. Most likely the motivation and psychology of Chechen suicide bombers defending their homeland is rather different from that of the Japanese students seeking spiritual renewal who joined Aum Shinrikyo (the Buddhist group that released sarin gas in the Toykyo subways) and they are different still from those who murdered American doctors and nurses at women’s health clinics. And the psychology of the leaders of terrorist groups may be rather different from that of the followers and members. And the character structure of the main 9/11 hijackers who were primarily educated, adult men who had lived on their own and in the west for years is surely radically different from the uprooted and unformed adolescents recruited into and constantly watched over after their initiation by militant Palestinian groups. And it must be emphasized, although this should be obvious, that like religion itself, religiously motivated terrorism is a multi-dimensional, multi-determined phenomenon. No one theoretical lens will reveal the whole picture. Only multiple perspectives can hope to help us understand it. Political scientists, journalists, social psychologists, students of religion, and other clinicians have all written about the topic. All these perspectives are necessary to understand religiously motivated terrorism, none are sufficient in themselves. Although their proponents sometimes claim they have the key to understanding religiously motivated terrorism. But if scholars of religion have learned nothing else in the last hundred years of religious studies, they have certainly discovered that no one unitary explanation for religious behavior can ever be sufficient. The perspective articulated here, like any perspective, is one piece of a much larger puzzle.
How much do we really know about terrorism? The short answer is “a lot” and “a very little.” “Terrorism” — as the cliché about one person’s terrorist being another’s freedom fighter suggests — is more often an epithet or a bit of propaganda than a category useful for understanding. There is general agreement that terrorism is not an end in itself or a motivation in itself (except perhaps for a few genuinely psychotic individual lone wolves). No movement is only a terrorist movement; its primary character is more likely political, economic, or religious. Terrorism is a tactic, not a basic type of group. This is the one single thing that almost all contemporary scholars of terrorism agree on: that terrorism is exceedingly multi-dimensional. Therefore attempts to comprehend it must be profoundly multi-disciplinary. Relying on only one discipline is to demand too much of a single, limited perspective.
We must also question the purpose of our attempts to understand terrorism. Part of the confusion over the understanding of terrorism results from the more basic confusion of not knowing what we want our explanations of terrorism to do for us. Before we undertake to “explain” terrorism, we should be clear as to what we want this “explanation” to accomplish? Many hope that understanding terrorism will help predict future terrorist actions. Others hope that it will help devise effective counter-terrorism strategies. Will a clinical psychological understanding of religious terrorism like that articulated here aid in those goals?
I am going to list some of the psycho-religious characteristics of religious groups that turn to violence. Groups with these characteristics are potentially dangerous. But I know from my work in forensic psychology that predicting violent behavior in any specific case is very, very complicated and very rarely successful. And dramatic acts of violence that change the course of history — the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand that lit the match on the conflagration of World War I, the taking hostage of the American embassy in the Iranian revolution, the 9/11 attack — are rarely predictable. So no claim will be made here that this model will enable us to predict with any certainty when specific individuals or groups may turn to terrorism. That is not my goal.
As for counter-terrorism, it is an important strategic principal that one should know one’s enemy. We succeeded in containing the expansiveness of the former Soviet Union in part because we had a detailed and nuanced understanding of the Soviet system. We had well-funded departments and research institutes at major universities and elsewhere dedicated to understanding the soviet system. Do we have any such institutions dedicated to understanding al Qaeda or fanatical American Christian groups today? I will argue that understanding some of what is at stake religiously and spiritually for religious groups that engage in terrorism can help devise ways of countering them. So a religious-psychological understanding can be an important part of the response to terrorism.
The most shocking conclusion of many of the studies of genocide and terrorism is that most extraordinary acts of inhumanity are committed by very ordinary people. As much as we may want to resist it, Hannah’s Arendt’s famous phrase “the banality of evil”, coined in reference to the Nazi leader Eichmann, appears to apply to most perpetrators of genocide and terror. They are ordinary people, just like you and me. Or, conversely, all of us have the potential to be agents of extraordinary evil. Theologians have said this for centuries. Now many social psychologists are coming to the same conclusion.
No serious contemporary study has found any evidence for diagnosable psychopathology in those who commit acts of terror and genocide. This has been found true of the vast majority of those who participated in carrying out the genocidal policies of the Third Reich – for the most part they had no overt psychopathology and were simply ordinary citizens functioning in an extraordinarily evil system. After reviewing all the literature on the perpetrators of genocide, the social-psychologist James Waller concludes that all the evidence supports “the reality of the propensity of ordinary people to commit extraordinary evil”. He could find no evidence that the actual perpetrators of genocide, taken as a whole, displayed any particular psychopathology or character disorder. Pape, in his extensive review of suicide terrorists reports that “what stands out is that, to a striking degree, the most deadly suicide terrorists have been almost ordinary people” McDermott, in his meticulously researched study of the 9/11 hijackers concludes that his inquiry “yields a truly troubling answer: the men of September 11 were, regrettably, I think, fairly ordinary men”.
Feelings of humiliation on the part of Arab populations has been one of the most frequently cited “root causes” of the turn to fundamentalism. One Palestinian trainer of “human bombers” has said, “Much of the work is already done by the suffering these people have been subject to … Only 10 percent comes from me. The suffering and living in exile away from their land has given the person 90 percent of what he needs to become a martyr “. Hafez in his study of “human bombers” makes the same point, writing “In Palestine, intense feelings of victimization underpin societal support for suicide bombings” (2006: 7). A Palestinian psychiatrist reports that “humiliation is an important factor motivating young suicide bombers” (quoted in Victoroff, 2005: 29). In a recent (2006) lecture, Jessica Stern, the author of Terror in the Name of God, said in no uncertain terms that in the Muslim communities, the greatest cause of terrorism is the feeling of humiliation (Stern, 2006).
Forensic psychology has emphasized connections between shame, humiliation and violence. Forensic psychologists cite numerous studies correlating conditions of shame and humiliation with increases in violence and crime, especially for males (Gilligan, 1996; Miller, 1993). For example, a psychiatrist working in prisons reports on a study that suggests that every act of violence in the prison was preceded by some humiliating event in the life of the prisoner (Gilligan, 1996). And statistics show that in the United States, at least, increases in crime follow exactly increases in the number of unemployed men.
While often rooted in social and political circumstances, shame and humiliation are profoundly psychological, and often spiritual, conditions. By holding out an absolute and perfect ideal – whether it’s a divine being or a perfect guru or master – against which all mortals inevitably fall short and by insisting on the “infinite qualitative difference” (in the words of Soren Kierkegaard) between human beings and the ideal, religions can easily exacerbate and play upon any natural human tendency towards feelings of shame and humiliation. I would suggest the more any religion exalts its ideal, or portrays the divine as an overpowering presence and emphasizes the gulf between finite human beings and that ideal so that we must feel like “worms, not human” (in the words of the Psalms), the more it contributes to and reinforces experiences of shame and humiliation.
In order to understand contemporary religiously motivated terrorism, it is important to emphasize that the humiliation that leads to violence does not have to be experienced directly and personally; for example, it may be the humiliation of a family member or of the whole Muslim community with which Islamic terrorists identify. The rise of mass media and the Internet throughout the Muslim world has extended the range of this identification. Mohammad Sidique Khan, thought to be the leader of the group that bombed the London underground in July 2005, said in his last video shown on TV by Al Jazeera on September 1, 2005,
Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters…Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight. (British Government , 2006a: 19)
The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or the demolition of family homes in Palestine evoke these identifications and feelings of humiliation that can lead directly to terrorist acts. Khosrokhavar (2005) calls this “humiliation by proxy.”
This expansion of the feeling of humiliation illustrates the way in which the experience humiliation can be embedded ideologically. A conquered, imprisoned, subjugated population experiences humiliation directly. But that is not the only source of humiliation now. An Arab citizen in Europe does not have to experience humiliation directly; mass communications can generate feelings of humiliation through empathy with fellow Muslims thousands of miles away. Religious ideology can play a major role here too. Throughout the Muslim diaspora, commentators and preachers strengthen this empathic link with co-religionists around the world, established by the mass media. The role of Muslim preachers of hate, living in England and throughout Europe, in stirring up the passions of their hearers, sometimes to the point of committing terrorist acts, has been well-documented. On the other side, Jewish settlers describe feeling humiliated because Palestinians are living on “their land” in the occupied West Bank. No United Nations mandate gave them title to that land; the “might makes right” philosophy of conquest has been illegal in international law for a century or more. The only claim the settlers have on the land is through religion – “that God gave us this land forever.” Their feelings of humiliation because Palestinians are living there are derived entirely from a set of religious convictions about it being their land. Both the Muslims living in diaspora in Europe and the settlers living on the West Bank use religious ideologies and interpretations to construct and intensify a sense of humiliation. For another example, Asahara felt that Aum Shinrikyo was being humiliated by the Japanese press inquiring into his activities, even though that is well within the accepted role of the press. And some conservative American Christians claim to feel humiliated by the separation of church and state, the teaching of evolution, or images in the movies.
In all these instances, a set of religious beliefs generates these feelings of humiliation on the part of many in the Muslim diaspora, in the Jewish settlements, or among the American apocalyptic Christians. The fact that these various forms of humiliation are ideologically driven does not mean they are not real. Quite the contrary. Such feelings of humiliation are just as able to fuel terrorist acts as the humiliation arising from military occupation. Thus religions fuel humiliation not only by subjecting devotees to humiliating rituals or beliefs or by playing on experiences of humiliation by occupying powers; religions also cast an ideological net that enables devotees to feel humiliated in circumstances when no direct humiliation is present.
In addition, globalization and “the new world order,” does in fact result in a homogenization of societies and their economies – a MacDonaldization of the world. With this comes the loss of local cultures and values. In ways that are apparently hard for those in the West who benefit from globalization to comprehend, many indigenous cultures experience this loss of local culture as a cultural imperialism on the part of the West, and especially the United States. Rather than a military invasion and occupation, this is felt to be a cultural invasion and occupation. Like all occupations by foreign powers, this one too can be experienced as a humiliation. And fanatical religions can and do play on these widely held feelings of humiliation caused by globalization’s cultural imperialism.
In this sense religious fundamentalism throughout the world is not simply, as so many commentators have insisted, a reaction against modernity. Rather the contemporary international rise of fundamentalism can also be seen as a response to the failure of the utopian dreams inherent in modernity – that technology and market economics would create a material paradise on earth. It has for some people. But for many around the world, modernity has not brought the promised benefits. Especially in the Muslim Middle East, the vision of a secular utopia has collapsed. Marxist-socialist parties and leaders oriented towards Western capitalism have each produced only dictatorships and misery for the common person. There are precious few examples of third-world, underdeveloped countries turned into material utopias by either market-oriented elites or Marxist cadres. The failures, as much if not more than the successes, of the ideologies of modernity (capitalism and Marxism) are the breeding ground for fundamentalism and its violent offshoots. And this analysis applies only to the physical commodities of life and does not even touch upon the spiritual vacuum left by secular modernity to which fundamentalist groups and spiritual renewal movements like many militant Islamicists, Aum Shinrikyo, or the People’s Temple appeal. Aum Shinrikyo, the People’s Temple, and some jihadist groups began as movements for spiritual renewal; their violent actions came as the result of the search for spiritual transformation.
A central psychological-spiritual theme in the writings of the jihadists and other religiously motivated terrorists is the feeling of humiliation. Such feelings of humiliation on the part of Muslim populations, Jewish settlers, Japanese students, and extreme right-wing American Christians provide a major part of the psychological motivation for (but never the justification of) their terrorist actions.
One of the most common and widespread beliefs of fanatically violent religious movements is their apocalyptic vision of a cosmic struggle of the forces of the all-good against the forces of the all-evil. Bin Laden says it clearly: there are “two adversaries; the Islamic nation, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. It is either victory and glory or defeat and humiliation.” . The Reverend Peter Hill, who shot and killed a physician in front of a family planning clinic in the USA, wrote “The conflict is between God’s will and kingdom and Satan’s opposing will and kingdom”. Hill’s actions were justified to an interviewer by his brother-in-arms, the Reverend Michael Bray, who wrote the Bible of the violent anti-choice movement entitled tellingly A Time to Kill, as the product of a
Christian subculture in America that considers itself at war with the larger society, and to some extent victimized by it… this subculture sees itself justified in its violent responses to a vast and violent repression waged by secular … agents of a satanic force…a great defensive Christian struggle against the secular state, a contest between the forces of spiritual truth and heathen darkness, in which the moral character of America as a righteous nation hangs in the balance. (Juergensmeyer, 2000: 36)
Virtually all religious terrorists agree that they are locked in an apocalyptic battle with demonic forces, that is, usually with the forces of secularism. Sayyid Qutb, a leading spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Eqypt, denoted secularism and the concomitant values of individual rights and the separation of religion and law as demonic and the source of most of the misery of the modern world and demanded a jihad against it. Continuing Qutb’s diatribe, the founder of Hamas told a reporter, “There’s a war going on” not just against Israeli occupation but against all secular governments including the Palestinian authority because there “is no such thing as a secular state in Islam”. Hamas’ arch enemy, Rabbi Meir Kahane whose Jewish Defense League was responsible for numerous attacks on Moslems in the United States and Israel said bluntly “secular government is the enemy”. Asahara, the founder of the Aum Shinrikyo, is reported to have shouted again and again at his followers, “Don’t you realize that this is war” and to have insisted that his group existed “on a war footing” Juergensmeyer concludes in his investigation of religiously sponsored terrorism around the globe, Terror in the Mind of God, that “what is strikingly similar about the cultures of which they [religious terrorists] are a part is their view of the contemporary world at war” (Juergensmeyer, 2000: 151).
This radically apocalyptic vision that dichotomizes the world into all-good and all-bad camps often goes beyond dehumanizing those seen as evil and corrupt to fomenting crusades to rid the world of them. At first this may go one only in the realm of fantasy with visions and portrayals of a climactic eschatological battle in which God triumphs over his enemies. As time goes on the focus may shift from God’s activity to ours and fanatics may come to feel that they can and should take it upon themselves to purify the world of the enemies of God.
The religious terrorist grows impatient with waiting for God to bring history to a close. Not content to believe and wait, he and his comrades take the apocalypse into their own hands and act to bring it about in a crusade against the evil-doers and the unrighteous. For example, in 2003 a group of Christians were arrested in Israel for a plan to blow up the holy Mosque on the sacred mount in the center of Jerusalem, hoping that action would precipitate a holy war in the Middle East that would lead to Armageddon. Lifton describes Asahara and the members of Aum Shinrikyo as having a “consuming hunger for Armageddon” and one member reported feeling “we should get actively involved with Armageddon soon”.
Any doubt that there is a segment of the Christian population of the United States that is at war with the rest of society can be laid to rest by examining the Army of God website. Clearly the Army of God feels that they are in a religious war right now; their site (www.armyofgod.com) is festooned with Biblical verses 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 clinic bombings, the bombing of a gay club, and the bomb that exploded at the Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. He was captured in 2003 after six years of eluding federal and state law enforcement agents. His statement is captioned “Psalm 144: 1: Blessed be the LORD my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight”. In this statement Rudolph defends his bombing of several clinics including one where an employee was killed and another wounded [“the abortionist is the attendant who helps bloated partiers disgorge themselves so they can return to the rotten feast of materialism and self-indulgence”, (Rudolph, nd, p. 6)], his bombing of a gay nightclub [“To pronounce it (homosexuality) to be just as legitimate a lifestyle choice is a direct assault upon the long term health of civilization and a vital threat to the very foundation of society…Every effort should be made, including force if necessary, to halt this effort…(It) should be ruthlessly opposed” (Rudolph, nd, pp. 4, 30], and his setting off a bomb during the 1996 Atlanta summer Olympics where one person was killed and over a hundred wounded [“The purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is the (sic) promote the values of global socialism as perfectly expressed in the song ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, which was the theme of the 1966 Games” (Rudolph, nd. p. 4)]. He also says that he planned to bomb an FBI Headquarters building (Rudolph, nd., p. 7). Before his execution Paul Hill wrote from prison that “The crying need is for people with the courage to affirm that it would be just to go to war against, or otherwise overthrow, any government that legalizes abortion” (Hill, 2003: 34). At the time of the anthrax scare in the east, in November of 2001, letters appearing to contain anthrax (actually they contained a harmless white powder) were sent to two private abortion-providing clinics in New Jersey and more than a hundred-fifty Planned Parenthood clinics around the United States. The letters were signed The Army of God (Stern, 2003: 330n5). For the Army of God, the Christian jihad against America has already begun.
The demonizing of enemies is a major tactic of fanatical religious movements. Khomeini proclaimed the west the “Great Satan.” Shortly before his assassination I heard a group of ultra-orthodox rabbis on a New York radio station calling the late Israeli Prime Minister Rabin a traitor to the nation and an enemy of God who should be removed “by any means possible.” Which, of course he was, when an ultra-orthodox Jewish student shot him. As one commentator on fanatical religions wrote, such groups “paint the world in black and white, creating radical polarities between good and evil” (Ammerman, 1994: 155).
The image of oneself as a participant in a cosmic battle with the forces of evil delegitimizes one’s opponents in a process Juergensmeyer calls “satanization,” which he defines as “creating satanic enemies [which] is part of the construction of the image of cosmic war.” The idea of “sacred warfare” makes possible the idea of “satanic opponent”. Enemies who embody pure evil cannot be argued with or compromised with; they can only be destroyed. And as morally or spiritually sub-human, destroying them is not an immoral act but is, rather, a moral duty. Such us-against-them thinking, so central to religiously inspired apocalypticism, leads inevitably to what Waller calls “the social death of the victim.”
Besides delegitimating one’s enemies, the image of cosmic warfare enables its proponents to feel themselves to be a part of the army of the pure and godly, fighting in the climatic battle of history. A report on Islamic militants reports that “by belonging to a radical group, otherwise powerless individuals become powerful”. The image of oneself as a participant in a cosmic battle with the forces of evil simultaneously delegitimizes one’s opponents and aggrandizes oneself. Obviously feeding one’s grandiosity and narcissism, empowering one to do actions one would never do under less dramatic circumstances. Feeling oneself a part of the Army of the Righteous gives a person a heightened sense of power and transforms ordinary people into actors whose actions have cosmic significance.
Beyond naked aggression or revenge, the drive for purification may also power such terrorist actions. The theme of purification by death and rebirth is common theme to almost all the world’s religions. Virtually all the traditions say that some process of dying – to self-centeredness, to a false self, to anti-spiritual cravings – is central to spiritual transformation. Apocalyptic religion takes this theme and historicizes it. Purification by death and rebirth are now something that can and must happen within history, in real time.
A related theme that runs through this material is the increasing spiritual and moral decline of the world, which is often pictured as sinking rapidly into moral and spiritual oblivion, a world heading for disaster. This theme of decline can be paralleled in virtually all religious texts of terror. For example, the decadence of modern western society is a theme found in almost all the writings of religiously motivated terrorists. Over and over, across traditions, one finds the same motiffs – 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 – 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.
Do these themes sound familiar? They should. They are the central themes of those who seek to change to legal and moral landscape of America. Commonly called Christian Reconstructionists, I refer to them as the Christian Taliban. 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, perhaps executed. Reconstructionism arose out of conservative Calvinism and seeks to make the laws of ancient Israel, as found in the books of Moses, or "Biblical Law" 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 and Muslim jihadists in regards to the Koran. One Reconstructionist theologian insists that: "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law" (Clarkson, 1994: 1). Central to the Reconstructionist’s ideal political order is widespread use of capital punishment. In addition to the current list of capital crimes common in the United States, Reconstructionists advocate the death penalty for “crimes” such as apostasy and abandoning Christianity, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, "sodomy or homosexuality," incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, "unchastity before marriage" (Clarkson, 1994: 2).
While most Christian Reconstructionists seek to impose their agenda on America through democratic means and not through violent revolution or terrorist means (although their triumph would mean the end of those same democratic principles), their teachings are often taken up by Christian terrorists in the United States. For example, Paul Hill (the killer of a physician in front of a women’s health clinic) says directly that “My worldview is based on Reconstruction principles” (Stern, 2003: 168). Thus he writes “The primary function of government is to uphold the Moral Law with the sword” (Hill, 2003: 48). Like other Reconstrictionists, Hill makes it clear that his agenda goes beyond simply ending abortion, he looks forward to nothing less than the transformation of American society. Hill told Jessica Stern that “Sooner or later America will become a Christian nation. Only Christians will be elected to public office. No false worship allowed” (Stern, 2003: 169). So it is no surprise that Hill advocates “A consistent effort to bring civil law into conformity with the Moral Law…” (Hill, 2003: 3). 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 (see <www.christiangallery.com>).
The violent anti-abortion movement has a much broader agenda than simply ending abortions. Much of it centered on sex. Their vision for America goes far beyond shutting down reproductive health clinics. The Army of God website contains more than bloody images of aborted fetuses. There are pages condemning birth control (since God said “be fruitful and multiply”); there are pages that contain long lists of gays and lesbians convicted of molesting children (called “The Homo News”); there are instructions on how to send bloody postcards to pro-choice judges, politicians, and neighbors; and there is a link called “Dead Abortionists and the Nuremberg Files.” A corresponding site (www.saltshaker.us) contains not only anti-abortion essays and bloody fetal pictures, and anti-gay arguments but also instructions on how to repeal divorce laws and undermine divorce proceedings. The Army of God is fighting not only to ban abortions and execute abortion providers, it would ban all forms of contraception, criminalize all forms of homosexuality, and end the possibility of divorce. This is a war to rid the world of any form of sexual expression other than intercourse in the confines of heterosexual marriage for the purpose of producing children.
This Christian Reconstructionists’ long-term plan to regulate sexuality and turn America into a theocracy was clearly revealed in their activities during the early days of the administration of George W. Bush. They used their new-found political power to make sure that false, misleading, unscientific (and potential lethal) information about sex and women’s health was provided to physicians and laypersons from government sources. Statements that condoms were ineffective against sexually transmitted diseases regularly appeared in United States government produced pamphlets and websites whereas all researchers (except those directly connected to the religious right) agreed then and still agree that the opposite is clearly the truth. In 2002 a fact-sheet providing accurate information on condoms was removed from the website of the Centers for Disease Control.
In the early years of the George W. Bush administration, government programs routinely contained claims that abortions cause later pregnancies to result in birth defects (no evidence), or sterility (no evidence), or breast cancer (false). On the later point an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine wrote “The government allowed people to believe — and encouraged people to believe — that abortions were a risk factor for breast cancer, even when the government knew that this research had been discredited and better research showed no connection” (Alexander, 2006). Several states, where the religious right is especially strong, have passed laws mandating that physicians tell patients there is a link between abortion and cancer, thereby legally forcing them to provide false information to their patients. The federal government gave over half a million dollars to a research foundation known to produce false and misleading studies regarding women’s sexuality and has interfered in numerous ways with legitimate researchers seeking to understand more about the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and other aspects of human sexuality.
In addition, as has been widely reported, the government delayed and delayed approving the so-called morning after pill (“Plan B”) despite the fact that all 28 members of the scientific advisory committee recommended for it. Why? A former NIH scientist said that her colleagues “believe that religiously based social conservatives have direct lines to the powers that be within the U.S. government, the administration, Congress, and are influencing public-health policy, practice and research in ways that are unprecedented and very dangerous.” This is certainly supported by the fact that many conservative denominations and groups lobbied the congress and administration against “Plan B” and later took credit for influencing the FDA when it announced that it was postponing a decision on “Plan B”. As a former head of the Women’s Health Office in the FDA said, “This decision was not based on science and clinical evidence. This threatens the FDA’s credibility and it threatens the faith the public has in the FDA for making sure products are safe and effective” (Alexander, 2006). It took until 2006 for “Plan B” to become available over-the-counter. However this availability is limited to women over the age of 18 and pharmacists are allowed to refuse to dispense it if they have religious objections.
In addition, in 2002 emergency contraception was removed from the list of approved interventions for women serving in the military or getting their medical treatment on military bases. And the Justice Department refused to make the offer of emergency contraception part of their protocol for the handing of rape victims. An attempt to change this in congress was defeated in 2005. As a result, studies done in 2006 found that rape victims were, in fact, denied access to emergency contraception or even information about it when they went to emergency rooms after an assault. As a result of all this, a physician and head of a large west-coast medical research facility said at the time, “I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated [by the government]… I do not feel comfortable giving it to my patients” (Alexander, 2006). Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as G. W. Bush’s Surgeon General from 2002-2006 recently (July, 2007) testified to congress that the Bush administration censored his speeches and restrained him from speaking in public about stem cell research, contraception, and misgivings about “abstinence only” sex education. “Anything that doesn’t fit [their] ideological, theological, or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried” Dr. Carmona is reported to have told congress. “Political interference with the work of the surgeon general appears to have reached a new level” one congressman is reported to have said (based on a Reuters report from the New York Times, July 10, 2007).
An important dimension of this discussion is the way in which Christian Reconstructionists have moved from seeking the criminalization of abortion to seeking the outlawing of contraception. Contraception has been legal for over 40 years (ten years more than abortion after Roe) and most Americans surely take it as a natural right and, often, as a matter of good public and private health. The religious right does not see it that way. “We see a direct connection between the practice of abortion and the practice of contraception” says the leader of an anti-abortion group which “now has a larger mission.” She went on to say, “We oppose all forms of contraception” (Shorto, 2006). While formerly the opposition to contraception was almost entirely associated with the Roman Catholic Church, it has spread to larger segments of the religious right. For example, President Bush’s appointment to the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee was a vigorous opponent of medical contraception. An article in the New York Times put it this way, “Many Christians who are active in the evolving anti-birth-control arena state frankly that what links their efforts is a religious commitment to altering the moral landscape of the country. In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex” (Shorto, 2006).
For Christian Reconstructionsts, even within marriage contraception is not acceptable and should not be available. And this drive focusing on sexual issues is itself part of a larger Reconstructionist agenda to make the United States a theocracy where all aspects of life are subject to their interpretation of Biblical morality.
This agenda of denying medical information, especially about women’s health, criminalizing any sexual expression outside of heterosexual marriage, and repressing women are themes common to the writings of many religious terrorists across many different religious traditions. Their societies are seen as cultures of moral corruption ruled by anti-religious leaders who may claim to be Jewish, Christian, or Muslim but really are not. Religion is defined in primarily legal terms, as a divine law, the capitalized “Moral Law” in Paul Hill’s writings (Hill, 2003). A divine mission to impose this law on the whole society and replace secular or hypocritical leaders with devout leaders is proclaimed. 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 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. 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.
All religious terrorists agree that there is a rottenness in the world, and especially in the West, that is just crying out for purification to set things right. Things are getting so bad that only a drastic intervention can turn things around. Lifton describes Aum Shinrikyo, in a phrase that could equally well apply to many religiously motivated terrorist groups, when he writes that they were driven by “the relentless impulse toward world-rejecting purification”. Jessica Stern says that religiously motivated terrorism is often a “project of purifying the world through extermination”.
In many religions the theme of purification is linked with the theme of sacrifice. The Latin root “sacri-ficium” means to “make holy.” Sacrifice is a way of making something holy, of purifying it. Sacrifices are offerings to the divine and to the community. But they are a special kind of offering in that what is given is destroyed. But something is not only destroyed, it (or something related to it like the religious community) is also transformed. Something is offered; something is made holy.
The theme of blood sacrifice is not traditional in Islam, but it often appears as part of the larger religious context from which the Muslim “human bombers” emerge. In reference to this theme of sanctification by self-sacrifice, Strenski writes
The ‘human bombers’ are regarded as ‘sacred’ by their communities of reference. They have been ‘made holy’ in the eyes of the community that ‘accepts’ them and their deed. They are elevated to lofty moral, and indeed, religious levels, as sacrificial victims themselves or as kinds of holy saints. (Strenski, 2003:8)
Hafez describes how,
Proponents of suicide bombings create posters, websites, and public exhibits to honor their "martyrs" and publicize their "heroic" sacrifice. During a visit to al-Najah University in Nablus, a place that has produced many suicide bombers, the author saw many posters and murals for "martyrs" exhibited on nearly every wall and entrance. These posters often combine the two seemingly contradictory themes of death and marriage into a coherent frame that portrays martyrdom as a vehicle for achieving eternal happiness. (Hafez, 2006a:177)
One suicide bomber, a civil engineering student, wrote in his final letter to his family: "Do not be sad and do not cry for we are in heaven. . . Receive news of my martyrdom with elation and chants to God for it is a day of celebration”.
Hassan reports that in Palestinian neighborhoods:
Calendars are illustrated with the ‘martyr of the month.’ Paintings glorify the dead bombers in Paradise, triumphant beneath a flock of green birds. The symbol is based on a saying of the prophet Mohammad that the soul of a martyr is carried to Allah in the bosom of the green birds of paradise… A biography of a martyr … tells of how his soul was borne upward on a fragment of a bomb… [An Imam] explained that the first drop of blood shed by a martyr during jihad washes away his sins instantaneously. On the Day of Judgment, he will face no reckoning. On the Day of Resurrection, he can intercede for several of his nearest and dearest to enter Heaven… (Hassan, 2001: 39)
Scholars familiar with the hagiographic traditions of the world’s religions will see many common themes here – for example the images of Christian saints and Buddhist Bodhisattvas borne up to paradise and ensconced in the highest heavens where, purified and sinless, they can intercede for others. By their offering and sacrifice, the human bombers and other martyrs have indeed become holy. This understanding of martyrdom and self-sacrifice is not traditional in Islam and it has been condemned by many leading Muslim clerics and scholars around the world. Rather it represents a major theological innovation on the part of radical Islamicists like bin Laden and it requires a very selective reading of traditional Islamic texts. The Tamil Tigers call their suicide bombings in Sri Lanka by a word that means “to give oneself.” Their actions are “a gift of the self”. In joining the Tigers one takes an oath in which “the only promise is I am prepared to give everything I have, including my life. It is an oath to the nation”.
The leader of the 9/11 attacks called on his comrades to “purify your soul from all blemishes” and spoke to them of “offering sacrifices and obedience” in “these last hours” (Atta, Last Letter). There he also refers to those whom they will kill as animals being ritually sacrificed. The word Atta uses in his letter for the slaughtering of the passengers is the Arabic word referring to the butchering of animals in a ritual way. It is also the word used in a videotape in reference to the beheading of two American contractors in Iraq in 2004 (Horgan, 2005: 119). These are seen as ritual acts of sacrifice. Hafez found this same conjunction of sacrifice and purification to be part of the cultures from which the Palestinian human bombers came.
Martyrdom is seen as an attempt to redeem society of its failure to act righteously. Words expressed by revered martyrs carry a great deal of weight. Thus, many suicide bombers use their statements to express their view of how individuals and communities should act to overcome the malaise that characterizes their condition. Muhammad Hazza'a al-ghoul, a Hamas activist who blew himself up on a bus on 18 June 2002, killing 19 and injuring 74 Israelis, wrote in his last will and testament: "How beautiful for the splinters of my bones to be the response that blows up the enemy . . . not for the love of killing, but so we can live as other people live . . . We do not sing the songs of death, but recite the hymns of life . . . we die so that future generations may live." Some urge their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters to pray regularly (especially the dawn prayers), to wear the head covering (hijab), and to become from among the best Muslims on earth. Shadi Sleyman al-Nabaheen, who carried out a failed suicide mission on 19 May 2003, wrote in his last will and testament: "My dear brothers and sisters: … Be from among the patient and steadfast and hold tightly to the religion of God. Guide your children to the mosque and instruct them to read the Qur'an and attend the recitation lessons, and teach them to love jihad and martyrdom. The discourse of the human bombers is not a martial discourse of anger and revenge but rather a spiritual discourse of redemption and purification.
All of this illustrates the sacrificial, that is to say religious, nature of these actions. And it is that sacrificial, religious nature of these acts of violence that gives meaning to them in the eyes of their proponents.
That Muslim “martyrdom operations” are understood by their participants as religious acts is made clear by the rituals that surround them. Of the most frightening documents to emerge in our twenty-first century encounter with terrorism is the letter which Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 terrorists, left for posterity. The major themes the letter are obedience, prayer, union with God, and sacrifice. Atta calls on his comrades to engage in devotions as preparation for their mission:
Remember the words of Almighty God … Remind yourself of the supplications…Bless your body with some verses from the Qur’an… Pray the morning prayer in a group and ponder the great rewards of that prayer. Make supplications afterward, and do not leave your apartment unless you have performed ablution before leaving…Read the words of God. (Atta, Last Letter)
Such religious ritualizing was not unique to the 9/11 cell, it is normal and a crucial part of the Muslim human bomber’s mission:
Just before the bomber sets out on his final journey, he performs a ritual ablution, puts on clean clothes, and tries to attend at least one communal prayer at a mosque. He says the traditional Islamic prayer that is customary before battle, and asks Allah to forgive his sins and bless his mission. He puts a Koran in his left breast pocket, above the heart, and he straps the explosives around his waist or picks up briefcase or a bag containing the bomb. The planner bids him farewell with the words, ‘May Allah be with you, may Allah give you success so that you achieve Paradise. The would-be martyr responds, we will meet in Paradise.’ Hours later, as he presses the detonator, he says, ‘Allah is great. All praise to Him.’ (Hassan, 2001: 41)
Atta’s letter goes on to stress the need for continual supplication throughout the 9/11 hijacking and the assurance of divine protection, favor and reward. “Everywhere you go, say that prayer and smile and be calm, for God is with the believers. And the angels will protect you without you feeling anything,” Atta writes to his comrades. There are few references in his letter to anger or revenge, rather the driving motivation is reunion with God. The letter makes it clear that the terrorists were not seeking political or social goals but rather that they “are heading toward eternal paradise.”.
The same attitude emerges from an interview with a Palestinian suicide bomber who survived a failed attempt and a gun battle with Israeli troops. Like Atta he describes his preparation for his “martyrdom operation” as a spiritual discipline.
We were in a constant state of worship. We told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were they would whip us to death. Those were the happiest days of my life … We were floating, swimming, in the feeling that we were about to enter eternity. We had no doubts. We had made on oath on the Koran, in the presence of Allah … I know there are other ways to do jihad. But this one is sweet, the sweetest. All martyrdom operations, if done for Allah’s sake, hurt less than a gnat’s bite. (Hassan, 2001: 36-37)
Hafez summarizes the ritual and therefore sacred nature of martyrdom operations when he writes,
Ritual and ceremony permeate all aspects of suicidal violence. The videotape to record the last will and testament of the bomber and solidify his or her commitment to martyrdom; the head band and banners emblazoned with Qur'anic verses to decorate the "living martyrs" quarters before they declare their intention to go on a "martyrdom" mission; the guns and bombs that serve as props for their last photos to symbolize empowered individuals making a free choice to self-sacrifice for the cause; the mass procession to commemorate the death of the "martyr"; the mourning ceremony where the women ululate and distribute candy to celebrate the martyr's entry into heaven, and men receive congratulatory handshakes because their sons or daughters achieved eternal salvation; the posters on the wall and electronic links on a website to immortalize the bombers; all these actions are undertaken repeatedly, routinely, and with procedural rigor. Martyrdom rituals elevate jihad and self-sacrifice into something higher than core beliefs of the faith; they turn them into performative traditions and redemptive actions through which the faithful express their devotion. (Hafez, 2006a: 177)
Such ritualizing of bloody deeds is far from unique to Islam. For example, a similar use of religious worship in the service of murder was carried out by the Reverend Paul Hill, who shot to death a physician and his body-guard in front of a women’s health clinic in Florida in 1994 and was later tried and convicted of capital murder and then executed in Florida in 2003. After deciding to kill a doctor, Hill reports feeling sadness at the thought of separation from his family as the result of probably going to prison (he expresses no sadness for the families of the physician and the bodyguard whom he had vowed to kill and who would be permanently separated from their family member). In the face of this sadness, Hill turns to worship and prayer to steel his resolve to carry through his deadly vow. Writing to his co-religionists, Hill says, that whenever he had doubts about his decision to kill,
As I lifted my heart and eyes upward, I was reminded of God’s promise to bless Abraham and grant him descendents as numerous as the stars in the sky. I claimed that promises as my own and rejoiced with all my might, lest my eyes become clouded with tears and they betray me. (Hill, 1997: 3)
The morning of the killing, Hill writes,
I forced myself to rise about 4 A.M. to spend time in prayer and Bible reading. The strength I needed for the day was found in Psalm 91 “Do not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day … For you have made the Lord, my (sic) refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place. (Hill, 1997: 4)
Shortly thereafter a physician and his guard lay dead on the Florida sidewalk. From prison, Hill wrote his fellow believers in a style that emulates the letters of Saint Paul in the New Testament. Hill begins with a salutation that follows the New Testament form, writing, “To my friends and all the saints…Greetings in the name of our savior. I trust the Lord is blessing and ministering to each of you. To know Him is to know the way, the truth, and the life. The Lord has been sustaining me in a wonderful way through your prayers…”. And Eric Rudolph, Hill’s co-religionist serving a life term for killing an abortion provider ends his statement with “And as I go to a prison cell for a lifetime, I know that I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course. I have kept the faith” (Rudolph, 2005: 6). Anyone familiar with the New Testament will see the obvious similarities here. Hill and Rudolph are using a traditional Christian epistolary form. Perhaps they feel they are writing sacred texts when explaining why they killed the doctors and others. The use of all these traditional religious and ritual forms underscores the religious nature of these acts of terror.
Since the human bombers (and the members of Aum Shinrikyo) are offering a religious sacrifice, their actions are not primarily motivated by “a utilitarian or pragmatic calculus” Most religiously motivated terrorist acts are “not done to achieve a strategic goal but to make a symbolic statement”. One important and perhaps unhappy practical conclusion of this, I would suggest, is that it is a mistake to seek to understand religiously motivated terrorists using the game theoretic or rational choice models so prominent in the social sciences these days. Rational choice models cannot really comprehend sacred values that are deeply held for non-instrumental reasons. Such values are not open to the instrumental calculus of statistically based social sciences. Social scientists trained only in these methodologies, and the policy makers they advise, may have only a limited understanding of religiously motivated terrorism.
In addition, given the sacred nature of these acts, counter-terrorism policies based on either appealing to the religiously motivated terrorists’ self-interest or frightening them into surrendering by an overwhelming show of force will probably have little success. The religious drive to sacrifice and make holy one’s life and one’s cause transcends and subsumes any pragmatic or purely self-interested motivations. Knowing themselves to be engaged in religious acts of sacrifice and understanding the West’s orientation away from the spiritual and towards the pragmatic is one of the reasons why militant Islamicists insist over and over that the secular West will never understand them.
What sort of God is it that demands sacrifice as the means of purification? Most often it is an angry, punitive God. Here the psychologist of religion can contribute to the discussion by pointing to some of the correlates of such an image of God. There is research that suggests, at least for religiously committed populations, that punitive and wrathful images of God are associated with external locus of control, anxiety and depression, lack of empathy and less mature inter-personal relations. The reverse has also been found to be true, ie., that a more benevolent internal representation of God is associated with more mature psychological development and the capacity for more mature relationships. Thus it makes theoretical as well as empirical sense that a person who envisions God as wrathful, punitive would also be more inclined towards a more rigid dichotomizing of the world and less capacity for empathy – traits that appear to characterize many religiously motivated terrorists.
Terrorist religious groups, by turning their devotees into martyrs and heroes, recruit members by mimesis, Rene Girard’s term for the human need to imitate who or what we idealize. Others in their cohort want to be like the hero or the martyr. So they imitate them and blow-up a train or assassinate a doctor or a nurse. The internet and other means of mass communication make this recruiting by mimesis easier by continually showing pictures of the martyrs on their websites, flashing them around the world. A potential jihadist in Spain can be inspired by a picture of a martyr in Iraq; a potential bomber in California can be inspired by a Christian fanatic in Maryland. All thanks to TV coverage and the internet. Thus technology extends the range of mimesis and terrorism becomes a globalized phenomena. For example, William Pierce’s Turner Diaries — the bible of the Christian Identity movement and the one book that Timothy McVeigh always had with him — ends with the hero crashing his jet into the Pentagon on a suicide mission. The book was written decades before 9/11 and right before his death Pierce is reported to have described the 9/11 attacks as the right thing done by the wrong people (Atran, 2005b).
The role of the media in terrorism is a very important element in understanding contemporary terrorist movements. It is beyond the scope of this lecture but virtually all commentators agree that analyzing the role of the media is a crucial part of any understanding of modern terrorism (Atran, 2005b, 2006b; Atran & Stern, 2005; Hoffman, 2006; Kirby, 2007; Moghadam, 2006; Weimann, 2006). Often terrorists are very sophisticated in their use of the media and in knowing how to manipulate it. If terrorism is partly a “theater” performed for an audience (Juergensmeyer), the perpetrators must know how to use technology to reach that audience. And the internet has enabled jihadist movements, like al Qaeda, to morph from more centralized, top-down paramilitary organizations to self-organizing and self-directed cells. Disaffected Moslems anywhere in the world, as well as Christian Identity soldiers in remote parts of America, or nationalistic Sikhs in Europe can easily download jihadist materials or Christian Identity Tracts or the inflammatory sermons of the Sikh saint Bhindranwale. They can also download bomb-making instructions and tactical advice from each other’s websites. For example “information for the do-it-yourself explosives used in the Madrid and London bombings is available on the Internet” (Atran, 2006b: 135). Even technical plans for a nuclear device can be found there (Atran, 2005c). No state sponsorship or contact with bin Laden or any Christian Identity leadership is necessary to carry out a “sacred mission.” The Aryan Nation website calls for the decentralizing of Aryan militancy and the self-conscious development of leaderless groups, virtually impossible for outsiders to penetrate, initiating violent actions on their own. And in a striking example of terrorist mimesis, it now refers to itself as the “Aryan jihad” (www.aryannation.org).
Such Internet linkages raise the probability that violent anti-secular groups (who totally abhor each other’s theologies) can communicate and cooperate in terrorist attacks against what are perceived as common enemies: for example, fundamentalist Jews and apocalyptic Christians working together to blow up the Mosque on the Dome of the Rock or Christian Identity Soldiers working with Islamic terrorists within the United States to blow up government buildings or symbols of immorality like women’s reproductive health clinics or bars and churches frequented by gays. Given the ease of internet communication, it is not out of the question for groups that agree on the evils of secularization to temporarily join forces against secular, liberal democratic institutions and more tolerant branches of their respective religions. Neal Horsely, advocate of killing physicians who perform abortions and creator of the Nuremburg Files, on his present website calls for an alliance of the “People of the Book” – Christians, Muslims, and Jews – to work together to violently put an end to abortion and to the tolerance for homosexuality and the same anti-abortion website reports that they have used the servers in a Muslim country to host their Internet anti-abortion campaign.
The ritualized nature of many of these violent actions points to another element in religiously motivated terrorism – what Juergensmeyer calls their “symbolic nature” or what Jessica Stern (2006) calls “terrorism as theater.” Again this underscores the sense in which these are symbolic, not primarily strategic, actions. Not only do religious rituals (purifications, prayers, scripture readings, etc.) surround these deeds, the deeds of terror themselves are ritualized. The targets chosen are not random or simply targets of convenience, nor are they necessarily of high strategic or military value. But they are highly symbolic both in terms of what they represent and in terms of the numbers who can be killed. The World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were clearly symbolic of American economic and military hegemony. Wounding or even destroying them would have little lasting impact of the actual conduct of the global economy or the American military, both of which are highly dispersed with many organizational redundancies. But wounding or destroying them has tremendous symbolic value. Likewise with the federal building in Okalahoma City, the London and Tokyo public transportation systems, international airline flights, and the mosque at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Bombing such targets does not bring the federal government to its knees, does not halt commerce and community in London or Tokyo, does not end the practice of Islam. But it has tremendous symbolic significance that creates profound emotional distress and dislocation in the people affected. The symbolic and ritualized nature of many of these deeds also connects them to their foundation in religion.
Virtually every report on militant Muslims stresses the reward of entering paradise as a major motivator for their actions. “Religious redemption” is one of the primary enticements to undertake suicide bombing. In western accounts, often this is accompanied by descriptions of scores of beautiful virgins waiting to welcome the adolescent male martyr home, even though most traditional Islamic scholars insist that the delights of paradise are not erotic. But clearly the desire to be with God is a powerful motivation at work here. A human bomb wrote to his mother and father in his last will and testament: "I wanted to beat you to heaven so I can intercede with my God on your behalf . . . " A Palestinian militant when asked about his motivation replies, “the power of the spirit pulls us upward,”. Atta tells his fellow hijackers: “You should feel complete tranquility, because the time between you and your marriage (in heaven) is very short. Afterward begins the happy life, where God is satisfied with you and eternal bliss…”. A Palestinian arrested by the Palestinian Authority before he could carry out his mission said of Paradise “It is very, very near – right in front of our eyes. It lies beneath the thumb. On the other side of the detonator.”
Clearly this is not unique to fanatical religious. Quite the reverse. The desire for an experience of union with a transcendental or divine reality appears foundational in virtually every religion. This desire for spiritual reunion may well be the beating heart of every living religion. What is unique to fanatical religions is the linkage of this desire for spiritual reunion with violence, especially the violence of sacrificial killing or apocalyptic purification. It may be this linkage of a well-nigh universal and powerful spiritual desire with the themes of bloody sacrifice and purification through violence that turns spiritual longing into terrorist action.
How does this happen? It appears connected to the image of God that is at work here – the image of a vengeful and punitive and overpowering patriarchal divine being. The believer must find a way to relate to an omnipotent being who appears to will the world’s destruction. The believer must humiliate himself before this demanding figure, feeling himself profoundly worthless and deeply guilty. And the punitive, omnipotent being must be appeased, placated. A bloody sacrifice must be offered. So we return again to the combination of a wrathful, punitive image of God, the insistence on purification at any cost, and the theme of bloody sacrifice. The wish for a bloody, apocalyptic day of reckoning and acts of religiously motivated terrorism are not simply reactions against modernity. While that anti-modern sentiment may play a role, these groups are a potent force in their own right (and not just a reaction to modernity), driven by their need to purify the world.
Another way in which religion promotes terrorism and genocide is by directly sanctioning violence and killing and by providing a moral justification for terrorists’ actions done in the name of God. A team of psychologists who interviewed incarcerated Palestinian militants reports that “their acts were in defense of their faith and commanded by their faith, and they received religious absolution for the acts”. One said “a martyrdom operation is the highest level of jihad, and highlights the depth of our faith. The bombers are holy fighters who carry out one of the most important articles of faith”. Another reported that “major [martyrdom] actions became the subject of sermons in the mosque, glorifying the attack and the attackers”. And another said simply “those who carry out the attacks are doing Allah’s work”. A graffiti in Gaza reads “Death in the way of Allah is life”. This is not unique to Islam. A book by a Christian clergyman in the United States uses Biblical and theological arguments to justify killing physicians at reproductive health clinics and is titled A Time to Kill – a title that says it all. And as we noted previously, one of the killers influenced by this book reports that, on the way to commit the murder, he opened his Bible and found a verse in the Psalms that he interpreted as justifying his actions.
Religions, however, do not simply justify violence the way other ideologies do. For religiously motivated terrorists, violence takes on a sacred purpose. Violence and genocide can become religious imperatives, carrying a cosmic or spiritual meaning beyond that provided by any political or legal authority. This inevitably leads to a significant reduction in the usual restrictions on the deployment of violence, thus opening up the possibility of full-scale, unrestricted genocidal campaigns with weapons of mass destruction. While all religions also have teachings and moral strictures designed precisely to restrain, if not eliminate, violent behavior (for example the “just war” traditions in Judaism and Christianity), such moral reasoning finds no place in the writings and theologies of religiously motivated terrorists. A Rand corporation study finds that,
The reason that terrorist incidents perpetuated for religious motives result in so many more deaths may be found in the radically different value system, mechanisms of legitimation and justification, concepts of morality, and worldviews embraced by the religious terrorist and his secular counterpart. For the religious terrorist, violence is first and foremost a sacramental act or divine duty executed in direct response to some theological demand or imperative. Terrorism thus assumes a transcendental dimension, and its perpetrators therefore often disregard the political, moral, or practical constraints that may affect other terrorists…religious terrorists often seek the elimination of broadly defined categories of enemies and accordingly regard such large-scale violence not only as morally justified but as necessary expedients for the attainment of their goals. (Hoffman, 2006: 88)
Along this line, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq, proclaims one of al Qaeda’s basic doctrines,
Allah commanded us to strike the Kuffar (unbelievers), kill them, and fight them by any means necessary to achieve the goal. The servants of Allah who perform jihad to elevate the word (laws) of Allah, are permitted to use any and all means necessary to strike the active unbeliever combatants for the purpose of killing them, snatch their souls from their body, cleanse the earth from their abomination, and lift their trial and persecution of the servants of Allah. The goal must be pursued even if the means to accomplish it affect both the intended active fighters and unintended passive ones such as women, children…This permissibility extends to situations in which Muslims may get killed if they happen to be with or near the intended enemy…Although spilling Muslim blood is a grave offense, it is not only permissible but it is mandated in order to prevent more serious adversity from happening, stalling or abandoning jihad that is. (Hoffman, 2006: 240)
Continuing jihad takes precedence over any other moral or theological imperative, including the traditional prohibitions against killing fellow Muslims and innocent non-combatants. For al Qaeda, jihad means total, all-out, unrestricted warfare. Exactly the same position modeled in the writings of American apocalyptic Christians and the Left Behind series of novels. This mixing of religion and violence in combination with the increasing sophistication and lethality of modern technologies of killing result in contemporary terrorism’s increasingly deadly results. This transcendental legitimation of killing is another way in which religions create and maintain a culture of violence out of which terrorism and genocide can easily emerge.
So, religions give rise to terrorist actions when they emphasize shame and humiliation, when they dichotomizes the world into warring camps of the all-good against the totally evil, when they demonize those with whom they disagree and foment crusades against them, when they advocate violence and bloody sacrifice as the primary means of purification, when their devotees seek to placate or be unified with a punitive and humiliating idealized figure or institution, when they offer theological justifications for violent acts, and when they promote prejudice and authoritarian behavior. These are some of the means by which religion makes people violent.
What psychological processes are involved when religion leads to violence? My answer is this: that universal religious themes such as purification or the search for reunion with the source of life or the longing for personal meaning and transformation — the classic instigators of spiritual search and religious conversion — become subsumed into destructive psychological motivations such as a Manichean dichotomizing of the world into all-good, all-evil camps, or the drive to connect with and appease a humiliating or persecuting idealized patriarchal Other. The result is the psychological preconditions for religiously sponsored terrorism and violence. So I think there are some general factors that might serve as warning signs that a religious group has a high potential for violence: (1) profound experiences of shame and humiliation either generated by social conditions outside the group and potentiated by it or generated from within the group, (2) splitting humanity into all-good and all-evil camps and the demonizing of the other, (3) a wrathful, punitive idealized deity or leader, (4) a conviction that purification requires the shedding of blood, and (5) often a fascination with violence.
What, then, do we learn about religion from studying religiously motivated terrorism? Religiously motivated terrorists, groups like Aum Shinrikyo and the People’s Temple, texts like the Left Behind series all illustrate the ambiguity of religion. Religion can bring into people’s lives a sense hope, meaning and purpose so necessary to human flourishing. Religion can inspire great works of art, music, and literature. Religion can give rise to powerful movements for social justice and experiences of personal transformation. Here religion can do great good and enrich human life. Religion also strengthens feelings of shame and humiliation and the longing for revenge. Religion also plays upon people’s needs for submission and authority. Religion also inculcates prejudices and the splitting of the world into a battle between the completely pure and the irredeemably evil. Here religion does great mischief and brings calamity upon the human species.
So a complete psychology of religion must include the psychology of religious violence. Such psychological processes as shame and humiliation, splitting and seeing the world in black-white terms along with the inability to tolerate ambivalence, the dynamic of projection and demonizing the other all contribute to violence and genocide apart from religion. But the history and psychology of religion make clear that such dynamics are not only central to the evocation of violence, they also lay close to the heart of much religious experience. By demanding submission to a deity, text, institution, group, or teacher that is experienced as wrathful, punitive, or rejecting, religions inevitably evoke or increase feelings of shame and humiliation that are major psychological causes of violent actions. By continually holding before the devotee an overly idealized institution, book, or leader, religions set up the psychodynamic basis for splitting and bifurcating experience. By teaching devotees that some groups are inferior, evil, satanic, condemned by God, religions encourage the demonizing of others and their “social death,” making their slaughter seem inconsequential, justified, or even required. For these reasons any turn to violence is not accidental but is rather close to the heart of much of the religious life.
All the world’s religions have advocated, supported, and sanctified violence and terrorism. All the world’s religions also have teachings, practices, and examples that vigorously critique and reject without compromise not only terrorist actions but also the deeper psychological motivations for those actions. Will spokesmen and spokeswomen arise within all the traditions who can speak without compromise for that critique of religion’s pretensions and the rejection of the tactics of terror? Or will religions’ most forceful and media-savvy spokespersons continue to be those who advocate the spilling of more and more blood. Humankind’s future may depend on the answer.
Religious leaders and practitioners, from within their traditions, must work against the rise of religiously sponsored terrorism. They must locate resources within their traditions that powerfully present a different view of the divine – a transcendental reality of love and compassion rather than of abjection and condemnation. They must reject splitting and dichotomizing and speak out against the in-group/out-group thinking of much religious fanaticism. They must teach and model compassion and empathy for the other, even the other who is hated and despised. They must explicitly reject terrorism. Those religious leaders like M. L. King, jr., Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama who have sought to transform humiliation into justice and peace have done precisely those things.
Put another way, the “war” on terror is a “war” of ideas. Berman concludes his essay on Sayyid Qutb, the father of the jihadi movement, with this exhortation,
It would be nice to think that, in the war against terror, our side too speaks of deep philosophical ideas—it would be nice to think that someone is arguing with the terrorists and with the readers of Sayyid Qutb. But here I have my worries. The followers of Qutb speak, in their wild fashion, of enormous human problems, and they urge one another to death and to murder. But the enemies of these people speak of what? The political leaders speak of United Nations resolutions, of unilateralism, of multilateralism, of weapons inspectors, of coercion and noncoercion. This is no answer to the terrorists. The terrorists speak insanely of deep things. The antiterrorists had better speak sanely of equally deep things…Who will speak of the sacred and the secular, of the physical world and the spiritual world…President George W. Bush, in his speech to congress a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, announced that he was going to wage a war of ideas. He has done no such thing. He is not the man for that. Philosophers and religious leaders will have to do this. Armies are in motion, but are the philosophers and religious leaders, the liberal thinkers, likewise in motion? There is something to worry about here…possibly the greatest worry of all. (Berman, 2003: 71)
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