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Terrorism And The Enemy in the Chair

Dominic Whiteman - 2/6/2007

Vigil’s terror trackers are constantly wading through extremist chat rooms, searching for drop email accounts, hidden message boards built into websites, which vary from innocent clothing sites to hardcore pornographic sites, studying extremist literature and wading through other detritus which extremists and terrorists use to further their pointless causes.

Much of this work is taxing on the brain. When you really come to think about the extremists and terrorists, life can get very depressing – but it is work that has to be done. (The fact is that physically attending their demonstrations, closed meetings and other occasions to rant is a far more draining mental experience than this mere online work).

VIGIL tries to keep its trackers au fait with what the enemy might be thinking. To do this, VIGIL’s strategic committee works out likely terror/extremist plots for itself and then thinks laterally to initiate likely counter strategy.

Working out what the enemy may be thinking strategically is a worthwhile pursuit. However, unless our trackers have minds of steel, we advise them to avoid thinking in depth about why the enemy are thinking the way they are thinking. After all there’s enough hard data and evidence out there – and fast increasing - to be focused on to get a result without having to dwell for too long on the machinations of sick minds.

Nonetheless an eminent British psychologist, who is a keen supporter of the work of Vigil, thinks that in the context of Islamist groups it is essential to have knowledge of what is going on and to understand the dynamics of it. He sees that as precisely what Vigil is helping with by confronting the enemy ideologically as well as strategically.

The psychologist himself shall remain nameless. But it is worth here publishing verbatim a summary of his professional opinion on how the enemy’s mind is working. He expressed this in a letter to Vigil Directors just after Christmas last year:

“After 9/11 the commonest question was ‘why’ but earlier bombings, and the statements about them, should have prompted us to have ready and clear answers to the ‘why’ question. However, some people feared that any answers might be seen as justifications.

Accordingly, when British politicians were invited to explain the London bombings they frequently avoided answering: saying that they did not want to justify terrorist acts – which anyway spring from an evil ideology. But it requires little thought to see that an explanation of something is not necessarily a justification and calling it evil is a rather crude playing to an electorate not regarded as needing to know very much. Furthermore, like most terrorism, the London bombings have a political as well as an ideological aspect. Explanation guides towards understanding which, in turn, is essential if we are to deal intelligently with threats such as the radical Islamist / jihadist one.

Some people think that suicide bombers are simply mad - and so it might be useful to investigate their madness – perhaps there could be a treatment. But none of the psychological research using proper control groups shows any evidence of the madness of terrorists although with some individuals such as Kaczynsky, the Unabomber, certainly it is at least more convenient to regard them as mad. Similarly with bin Laden, it is easier to label him mad and deluded that to pay close attention to his very clear, if chilling, public messages to the West and to his supporters. We know enough about bin Laden to see exactly how he moved from being the son of a wealthy Saudi family to become an anti-Russian liberation fighter in Afghanistan, and at that time America did not see him as the madman and demon that some now regard him as.

Bin Laden is neither mad nor a demon, he is an effective media-orientated jihadist and politician. Although jihadists are unlikely to be at all mad they probably have predictable psychological traits, such as alienation and obsessive-compulsivity [the documentary Obsession was well-named]. Furthermore, the psychological processes used by the organisations that Vigil studies and counters are well understood. Exactly the same processes, with different labels on, are used by the West as well. We teach, but madrassahs indoctrinate. All societies influence peoples’ psychological processes of construal. We all set up loyalties to reference groups – the groups may be vitally different, but the process of setting up loyalties is the same everywhere. Also the same everywhere is the psychological need to belong. For the new member belonging to a jihadi group it may feel like the first time they truly belonged somewhere, the first time they felt truly significant – that what they do in the group counts. In a group setting individual judgment and behaviour are strongly influenced by powerful forces of group dynamics. Islamist groups provide significant opportunities to practise loyalty and feel the warmth of solidarity with brothers. Jihadi groups tend to define themselves in relation to an outside world which both threatens and justifies their existence, members have both a common faith and a common enemy. Members’ independent judgment usually is subordinate to that of the group leader who may be highly charismatic - like bin Laden. In extreme cases members can act as if they did not have minds of their own. The group acts as a selector and interpreter of its guiding ideology. Those who have fragmented psychosocial identities are easily submerged in the group so that a group mind emerges with a cohesion that actually is enhanced by any external danger or threat. Outside hostility can both solidify and justify a group and the membership of it. However, the ultimate self-justification of a terrorist group is the carrying out of acts of terrorism, identified by some as sacred terrorism - in which ends and means are sanctioned by divine authority.

Psychologically speaking, jihadis who become terrorists are likely to be stimulus-hungry and impatient characters who like to externalise and project any personal badness by attributing badness to others. Such people have a pressing need for an outside enemy and that is supported by any fundamentalist views. Terrorists are likely to have the narcissistic characteristics of self-absorption, rage, grandiosity, and disregard of others’ views and entitlements. For some, being a terrorist may be an attractive proposition in itself, apart from any ideology. Those with a victim mentality are likely to be sensitive to any treatment by the target or his society which they readily can construe as persecutory. In group situations they may appear hot-headed and enraged. In order to legitimise killing they will tend to minimise the humanity of others, and debase them, for example, by calling them pigs and monkeys [squirrels, in the case of Vigil people], with non-Muslims being dismissed as valueless kuffar. Jihadis find the polarising rhetoric of terrorism especially attractive; their radicalism eventually goes beyond reversal. Activism may be an attractive way to demonstrate their Muslim authenticity and gain status. Becoming a suicide bomber and a martyr, does the same. It is a telling phrase in Islam that ‘paradise is under the shade of swords’.

All that is simply to explain, it does not justify anything, but it all points to answers to the vitally important ‘how’ question. As to the ‘why’ question, bin Laden has repeatedly explained this both for a Muslim audience and for a Western one, so often and in so much detail that the lack of understanding after 9/11 is as baffling as it is dangerous. To rephrase Edmund Burke: ‘all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to look the other way’. We don’t have to agree with bin Laden but we do have to understand him and his psychology, and that is not at all difficult. To start with, bin Laden is alienated from the land of his birth just as his forbears in the Muslim Brotherhood were alienated by Egyptian politics; just as the British bombers felt alienated so that they owed no allegiance to being peaceful and British. Reading bin Laden it is easy to see how the Qur’an time and again provides an inescapable rationale for jihad. As to the reference group, Muslims see themselves as brothers in a global community without national borders. Most jihadi brothers wish for a caliphate, ruled by sharia, with the Levant at the centre of widespread and restored Muslim lands.

Echoes of all this can be seen in the media-orientated explanatory statement of Mohammad Siddique Khan, one of the London suicide bombers. He begins by pointing out that plenty of explanations for such acts have been given before. Khan then implies that blood is necessary to give emphasis to those explanations because the explanations have been discounted, distorted or ignored. If that implication has been correctly drawn, then it is of enormous significance that some politicians may not have seen the danger here. Khan says that politicians will try to distort the event. Indeed it was dismissed as a perverted form of Islam whereas Khan, and those similar to him, see their form of jihad simply as obedience to Allah and as following Mohammed, whilst turning their backs on materialism. Khan sees his people as victims of Western governments and because he sees the British government as being given legitimacy by the electors. Therefore it is the electors who have to bear the consequences of government actions. So it was the general public which was the actual target of the 7/7 jihadis, who are soldiers at war using terrorism as a well established weapon of psychological warfare. Khan invites his audience to see the reality of the situation - it is vital we do so, no matter how much we may deplore it. Khan ends his statement with a reference to paradise and with acknowledgements to his heroes, role models, brothers and sisters.

None of this is at all mad nor need it justify what we call the atrocity, but it is worth remembering that we understood, and did not label as atrocities, the blowing up of trains by heroic French Resistance fighters: all is fair in love and war – and jihadis consider it is war that is being conducted right now. In some aspects Islam is a religion of peace, but the violent aspect of jihad makes it also a religion of violence. It is not terror we are at war with but with a form of jihad that enjoins violence. Islamic fundamentalism is not crazy at all – it makes almost oppressively logical sense, within its own terms. And it is worth remembering that in Islam there is no separation of religion and politics. Beyond its founding, the history of Islam largely is a political and military history.

Vigil is helping us to understand what is going on but we also need to spread that knowledge and make it clear to the bin Ladens and Siddique Khans, and to the Muslim community in general, that indeed we, the kuffar, really do grasp all that. We need to recognise the standing of the Qur’an and the regard in which it is held as the actual words of Allah. We need to understand what it means that Muhammad is taken by the faithful as the ideal man and role model - a man who was a master of military strategy and fighting, not least because he was under the direct instruction and guidance of Allah. It is not uncommon for the children of Muslims to learn the Qur’an by heart, including the jihadi bits. That learning includes the fighting history of early Islam, and in places like Palestine the learning includes the performance of jihadi chants and songs. Some say that Islam must embrace the whole world before jihad is no longer needed.

It is helpful to remember the need we all have to belong somewhere. Islamist groups meet that need, especially for the disaffected, and when these groups are directed by people who rename themselves with the title Abu, meaning father, we can appreciate how that will magnetise those who have deep psychological needs for father figures. Furthermore other group members being called brothers similarly speaks to the need to belong to a united and dedicated family, especially those who feel alienated. Organisations and groups that advocate violent jihad rely on a supply of people who are alienated by an indifferent or hostile host culture. How jihadi people become alienated is relevant and is part of the problem.

If we are at war with political Islamists it would be helpful to be properly informed about our foe. For example, we should be familiar with the Qur’an, the ultimate source of authority for jihad, and it is instructive to read not only bin Laden but also his precursors such as Qutb [Milestones], Faraj [The Neglected Duty], and Azzam [Join the Caravan]. Faraj explains that the decline of Islam, and its despair, is because of the failure to engage in jihad. Azzam’s slogan was: ‘Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues’. We may not like these texts but, just like the groups that Vigil investigates, they do tell us exactly what we are up against. And even though they do not point directly to solutions we must take them into account in framing solutions.

Many of the courses that we are drawn to, from criticism to outright retaliation and attack, can actually strengthen what we wish to oppose, hostility simply gives the jihadist extra validity. Some politicians say that what we need to do is to support those Muslims who are against violent jihad, the jihadis reply that those Muslims are simply part of the enemy they are against. Those reformers who want to change uncritical acceptance of the Qur’an as the final manifesto of god, such as Irshad Manji, may command our support but that support, plus what they advocate, aligns them with Satan so far as jihadis are concerned. To reduce risks we need to reduce the attractiveness of the terrorist path for our alienated youth. We also need covertly to support peaceful Islamic initiatives and populations – such as Muslim women - and quietly work with whatever non-terrorist support systems can be identified. This will take a long time and is unlikely to be sufficient on its own.

We should take care not to provide ammunition and not to encourage new recruits. Those who follow Aquinas say the ends do not justify the means. Jihadists, as good utilitarians, hold the contrary view – as do those who support Guantanamo [a great piece of ammunition for the jihad]. In many of the Islamist websites we can see how sensitive Muslims are to feeling victimised. This paints us as persecutors and we should avoid all opportunities of providing such advantages. And the more we fight, and the more often we say we shall overcome, the more stimulus and publicity we give to those who thrive on our opposition.”