[Paleopsych] FrontPage: Symposium: Through the Eyes of a Suicide Bomber by Jamie Glazov
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Symposium: Through the Eyes of a Suicide Bomber by Jamie Glazov
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19110 et seq.
August 12, 2005
The July suicide bombings in London were yet another horrifying
reminder of the dreadful tactic perpetrated by Islamic jihadists in
their holy war. To be sure, Israeli citizens have long known the
nightmare of suicide bombing and Iraqis, unfortunately, have become
acquainted with it daily.
What exactly is inside the mind of the Islamic suicide bomber? What
impulse motivates a human being, who supposedly believes in God, to
blow himself up alongside innocent people? To discuss these and other
questions with us today, Frontpage Symposium has assembled a
distinguished panel. Our guests today are:
Jessica Stern, an expert on terrorism, a lecturer on the subject at
Harvard, and the author of [25]Terror in the Name of God: Why
Religious Militants Kill;
Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a prison psychiatrist who has had much
experience with treating Muslim patients in Britain and who has
witnessed the "collision of cultures." He is the author of his new
collection of essays, [26]Our Culture, What's Left of It. The
Mandarins and the Masses;
Dr. Nancy Kobrin, an affiliated professor to the University of Haifa,
Arabist, psychoanalyst and author of the upcoming book, The Sheikh's
New Clothes: Islamic Suicide Terror and What It's Really All About;
and
Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz, a scholar of Islamic Studies and author of Von
Allah zum Terror? Der Djihad und die Deformierung des Westens (From
Allah to Terror? Jihad and the Western Deformation).
FP: Jessica Stern, Dr. Tilman Nagel, Dr. Nancy Kobrin and Dr.
Hans-Peter Raddatz, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
Suicide bombings are a perpetual reality in Iraq and Israel today.
In Israel, we see Palestinians, often kids, blowing themselves up
alongside Jewish inoccents while their parents cheer on in euphoria.
In Iraq, we see foreign fighters coming from all over the Arab and
Muslim world to detonate themselves amongst innocent civilians.
Now they have struck in London.
Lets start from square one to crystallize things. What instils the
yearning to blow oneself up?
Dr. Raddatz?
Raddatz: If you were a molecule type of "personality" who has only one
alternative of existence, namely being stripped of any individual ego
and merged with the mass of the "umma", the community of Allah, you
might also be tempted to look for some dynamite - or rather C4 - in
order to focus your unimportant life into one single, supposedly
grandiose moment. When you in addition to that are not able to
distinguish spiritual from material aspects, you are in really
serious trouble.
In one previous symposium, Dr. Kobrin rightly mentioned the
regrettable inabililty of not so too few Muslims to tell brain from
mind. While they cut heads off, they think to destroy the thoughts of
their victims. Similar to that they expect to meet innumerable
beautiful girls in paradise since all their lives they have been told
to proceed directly there as reward for the martyr death. Needless to
mention that there will be unlimited erections as well as hymens
renewed constantly. Some of the Palestinian suicide bombers wrap
their penises into fire-proof aluminum foil to save them for the
pleasures to come. Their parents get even doubly rewarded, by cash and
"honor." Allah provides for an unusually profitable deal, indeed.
What we are facing here is not only pre-modern but pre-cultural
"thinking". The Koran and Islamic tradition set guidelines conserving
a manichaean type of prevalence claim that ultimately rejects any
other society alternative. While strengthening its orthodox structures
worldwide, Islam keeps on lacking one very important feature which
most cultures have developed and which is indispensable for diverting
violence inside a group: the subliminal function of the sacrifice
concept. The impossibility for the average Muslim individual
to develop a thinking outside the community and for the Muslim
collective to deal with power and with women without violence has
prevailed until today and is even picking up again due to
modernization conflicts.
In this context, one has to keep in mind the Western
"scientists" in sociolgy, anthropology, neuro-physiology etc. who deny
the singularity of the human mind. Therefore, they have no problems
with cognition Islamic style and thus explain "martyr" bombers as
"emergency defence". Ultimately we are talking about politics, of
course, renewing sympathies with a radical ideology quite close to the
biology of Fascism.
FP: Ms. Stern?
Stern: There has been exponential growth in suicide attack worldwide,
the most virulent form of terrorism, which accounts for less than 5
percent of all terrorist events but about 50 percent of all
casualties. Many suicide attacks since1980 originated in organized
campaigns to drive perceived occupiers from the attackers` homeland,
and US military interventions have only exacerbated the problem. That
said, most military occupations in history have not led to suicide
bombing campaigns.
The answer to your question - what instils the yearning to blow
oneself up is dependent on many factors. I believe the reasons are
likely to be a combination of political, religious, psychological,
organizational, and material factors. But not all suicide-murder
operations are committed by religious zealots. It used to be the case
that a secular group Sri Lankas Tamil Tigers were responsible for most
suicide-murder attacks. Now Islamist groups are more important.
You mention two areas: Palestine and Iraq in particular.
In Palestine, Hamas and the other terrorist groups use religion to
justify their aspirations for political power and to recover
Palestinian territory from Israeli occupation. Part of this land is
sacred to Muslims but also to Jews and Christians. To achieve their
ends, some of which are accepted as legitimate by much of the world,
Hamas and the other terrorist groups in the region are committing
atrocities against Israeli citizens and against the Palestinian
people. The terrorist leaders deliberately inculcate the idea that
martyrdom operations are sacred acts, worthy of both earthly and
heavenly rewards. Mainstream Islamic scholars are increasingly
voicing their view that suicide-bombing attacks against civilians are
not acts of martyrdom but suicide and murder, both of which are
forbidden by Islamic law.
I believe the best way to understand the situation in Palestine is to
see suicide-murder as a kind of epidemic disease. Ordinary suicide
has been shown to spread through social contagion, especially among
youth. Studies have shown that a teenager whose friend or relative
attempts or commits suicide is more likely to attempt or commit
suicide himself. Not surprisingly, ordinary suicide is more common
among youths who are depressed or exposed to intense social stress.
Suicide bombing is different from ordinary suicide: It entails a
willingness not only to die, but also to kill others. Often, an
organization takes charge of planning the suicide operation, and the
terrorist may be on call for weeks or, in the case of the leaders of
the September 11^th attacks, years. But there are some commonalties.
The situation in Gaza suggests that suicide-murder can also be spread
through social contagion, that there is some tipping point beyond
which a cult of suicide-murder takes hold among youth. Once this
happens, the role of the organization appears to be less critical: the
bombing takes on a momentum of its own. Martyrdom operations have
become part of the popular culture in Gaza and the West Bank. For
example, on the streets of Gaza, children play a game called shuhada,
which includes a mock funeral for a suicide bomber. Teenage rock
groups praise martyrs in their songs. Asked to name their heroes,
young Palestinians are likely to include suicide bombers on the list.
There were more suicide attacks in Iraq in 2004 (104) than for the
entire globe in any previous year of contemporary history, involving
fighters from at least 15 Arab countries. And the rate of suicide
attacks in Iraq in 2005 is likely to surpass that.
From talking to terrorists and those who monitor them, I and others
have learned that terrorism thrives in an atmosphere of humiliation,
marginalization, and dashed expectations. Osama bin Laden's deputy,
Ayman Zawahiri, describes globalization as deeply humiliating to
Muslims. That's why, he says, he encourages the youth of Islam to
carry arms and defend their religion with pride and dignity rather
than ignobly submit to the new world order. Perceived humiliation and
religious fervor are both tools that terrorist leaders can cynically
exploit to promote martyrdom.
FP: Thanks Ms. Stern.
To make the statement that US military interventions have only
exacerbated the problem might be true on some levels, in the sense
that if you confront your enemy he is going to engage in violence. But
to mention U.S. intervention in the context of our discussion is to
imply that it is Americas fault somewhere that a Muslim in the world
gives up his college education and comfortable material existence and
flocks to Iraq to blow himself up. Daniel Pipes article[27] The
California Suicide Bomber is a perfect example of where a suicide
bomber does not come from among the poor, the oppressed and the
downtrodden. His cravings to kill himself alongside innocents stemmed
from many factors other than having supposedly suffered from American
imperialism.
There can be all kinds of military occupations, invasions, etc. Not
all people blow themselves up.
Ms. Stern, you mention that mainstream Islamic scholars are
increasingly voicing their view that suicide-bombing attacks against
civilians are not acts of martyrdom but suicide and murder, both of
which are forbidden by Islamic law. These are truly encouraging
developments and we all hope they continue. But unfortunately, these
Islamic scholars are pretty effective in their invisibility and in
getting absolutely no respect from suicide bombers and from a large
section of the Muslim world. Why is that? Why is it that the parents
of Palestinian suicide bombers do not shiver in dread worrying that
their dead kids are in hell -- because their clerics teach that
suicide bombing is against Islamic law and will not lead you to
paradise, but to ever-lasting hell-fire? How come the 9/11 hijackers
werent depressed knowing they would be in hell after they would commit
their crime, because their clerics and their religious texts told them
this would be the case?
Could it be that maybe suicide and murder might just not be all that
directly in conflict with certain components of Islam law? Scholar
Robert Spencers [28]Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens
America and the West clearly demonstrates that Islamic jihad finds
much of its basis in Islamic religious texts. Yes, there are many
portions of Islamic texts that teach tolerance and peace, and we must
all fight for this part of Islam to prevail and to defeat the side
that Islamic extremists and terrorists refer to and manipulate. But
can we, and is it wise for us, to deny that the negative and dark side
exists?
Terry McDermotts new book [29]Perfect Soldiers is a clear example of
how the 9/11 hijackers were the last thing from impoverished and
oppressed victims. For some reason, I highly doubt that if you gave a
New Testament to each of those individuals and that if they
experienced a religious conversion to Christianity, or if they became
atheists, that they would still have longed with such fervor to leave
this world though smashing planes into populated American buildings
filled with thousands of innocent people.
Humiliation, marginalization, and dashed expectations? Yes, those
words can fit the plight of many Jews under Nazi occupation, but you
didnt see them strapping bombs unto themselves and walking into cafés
and blowing themselves up. These terms also fit my Russian peoples and
many of the Russian dissidents who suffered under the horror of Soviet
tyranny. These dissidents included my parents and many of our friends.
They were humiliated, marginalized and suffered dashed expectations. I
cant name you one who walked into a café in Russia and blew himself up
alongside innocents.
It is clear that Islamist terrorists hate globalization. But they do
so because it makes life on this earth even more materially
comfortable. They reject earthly pleasure and happiness. The enjoyment
of life represents humiliation to them. The sight of a happy free and
spontaneous woman laughing, dressed as she wants to be dressed,
represents humiliation to them. That is the problem. Can we really
blame America for the unhappiness of those who venerate a death-cult
that rejects individualism and the pursuit of happiness in earthly
existence?
Ms. Stern, I am by no means saying that you have argued some of these
notions that I am questioning and criticizing. I am just provoking a
dialogue here that I hope will help all of us crystallize some
important themes relevant to this discussion.
Dr. Dalrymple, tell us about your own personal experience with your
patients and what it revealed about the Muslim mindset. As you answer
this, please also include what we really want to narrow in on: what is
inside the mind of the suicide bomber?
Dalrymple: I agree that poverty and humiliation are not sufficient
explanations of the phenomenon. These are things which are almost part
of universal human experience.
I think the problem is a combustible mixture of elements.
The first is the belief that Muslims are in possession of the final
revealed truth, and that they have a testament and a tradition of
sayings of the Prophet that in essence answer all human questions, and
by the light of which all such questions ought not only to be answered
but are answerable. While no doubt there are Christians who feel more
or less the same about their favoured scriptures, they now have to
live in a world of competing ideas. Muslims have created societies in
which it is possible, perhaps, to dispute what the Koran and hadith
mean, but not their underlying authority to answer all questions. It
is still not safe in a Muslim country to say 'There is no God and
Mohammed was therefore not his prophet, but a man suffering from a
delusion.'
While in possession of transcendental religious and philosophical
truth, however, it has not escaped notice that the Muslim world has
fallen behind the rest of the world. Japan, China, India are fast
catching up or overtaking the West: they have been able to meet the
Western challenge. No Muslim country has managed more than a kind of
parasitic prosperity, dependent on oil - the industry which no Muslim
did anything to discover or develop. Even their wealth, then, is a
reminder of the dependence. The whole of the Arab world, minus the
oil, is economically less significant to the rest of the world than
one Finnish telephone company.
The fact that Islamic civilisation was once exquisite, and in advance
of most others, is in this context a disadvantage. It means that
Muslims tend to think in terms of recovery of glory, rather than
anything new. In Muslim bookshops, you can find books about the
scholars and scientists who led the world 600 years ago or more - who
are a perfectly legitimate subject of enquiry of course - but after
that there is a hiatus. If there had been no Muslims for the last 300
or 400 years, the world would have lost no technical or scientific
advance.
So there is both a sense of superiority and a gnawing sense of
inferiority. Repeated attempts to 'catch up' within an Islamic context
have failed. Moreover, there is an element of personal self-hatred as
well. For all the hatred of the West, it is absolutely essential to
the satisfaction of the tastes of the modern Muslims. They are all
partly Westernised. Even Osama dresses half-Muslim, half-Western. His
reliance of Western inventions is total. As for the attractions of the
flesh-pots of the west, they need not be stressed.
Then, of course, there is the day to day humiliation of individuals,
who do not see a purely pragmatic way out of their impasse. I think
this completes the mindset.
In summary, we have:
* Metaphysical superiority.
* Technical and intellectual retardation.
* Self-hatred caused by the impurity of their own desires.
* No practical means of escape from genuine quotidian humiliations.
* The promise of rewards, for their families on earth and for
themselves in the other world.
FP: Thank you Dr. Dalrymple. So, lets get deeper into this now. With
this background and context, lets get inside the mind of a
hypothetical suicide bomber. Paint a picture for us of a Muslim, let
us say, that you once had in your psychiatrist office in Britain. Let
us suppose that he decides to go to Iraq to blow himself up.
Illustrate for us the step-by-step process that is going on in his
mind, as he quits his life and heads off to Iraq. Sketch for us the
thoughts patterns that lead to this decision-making. Pretend you are
writing a script for a movie and we are listening to what is going on
in his head as he quits school or his job, starts packing his suitcase
or whatever, and is visualizing with great glee how he will detonate
himself in a crowd of civilians in Baghdad.
Dalrymple: Clearly, although the fundamental socio-psychological
conditions I have described apply to millions - hundreds of millions -
of people, only a vanishingly small proportion of them actually want
to be suicide bombers, even if rather more admire and approve of
suicide bombers.
So what pushes someone over the edge, as it were? In my experience,
which admittedly is limited, and of a selected sample, I would say the
following:
The suicide bomber is of above average intelligence. He, or she, is
therefore searching for an explanation of his or her existential
plight. (You need a certain level of intellection for this to be so.)
This involves the identification of an enemy.
The person who becomes a bomber often has a special, personal sense of
grievance. This can derive from an intrinsic sensitivity to perceived
insult, consequent upon the normal variation of human personality, or
can come from outside, eg a person is humiliatingly accused of
something of which he is guilty, but regards the accusation itself as
lese majeste. For example, a Muslim rapist I know wanted to become a
suicide bomber, having become convinced that the West was rotten to
the core, deficient in moral worth, because it took the word of a mere
woman against his.
So to refine it further, we need all the general cultural and economic
conditions, plus the personal particularities I have suggested.
The act of killing oneself for a cause, in the process taking a few
'enemies' with one, is an apologia pro vita sua. Let us not forget
that we in the West have a long and inglorious, irrational tradition
of supposing that the lengths to which people are prepared to go in
the furtherance of a cause is itself evidence of the moral worth of
that cause.
The kind of would-be suicide bomber I have known thinks to himself:
They have accused me of what I have done.
What I have done is no crime.
Therefore those who accuse me are the corrupt of the earth.
Those who accuse me are truly representative of the society from which
they come.
The destruction of the corrupt of the earth will be rewarded
appropriately. Therefore it matters not which individuals I destroy.
The belief is therefore not in representative government, but in
representative guilt.
FP: Thank you Dr. Dalrymple. This is fascinating and frightening
stuff. Dr. Kobrin?
Kobrin: Yes Jamie, it is perversely fascinating and downright
terrifying. It is also part of the Eros of the terrorism. Dr.
Dalrymple has succinctly described the crux of the problem that the
other is always already guilty and hence expendable. Similarly Dr.
Raddatz is correct in fore grounding the Ummah. Just as the child in
Arab Muslim culture is not permitted to separate from the Umm [Ar.
mother], this enmeshment gets repeated and reinforced by the Ummah as
a singularly fused group. There are working groups which strive for
the betterment of life and then, there are regressed destructive
groups. The Islamic terrorist organizations are among the most
destructive because they send their own to be killed off using women
and children under the guise of martyrdom while attacking and
murdering the innocent. Just because this is done consciously as a
tactical tool does not mean there doesnt exist a vicious psychological
undercurrent.
When there is no sense of self, this leads to many problems. If you
are denied a life and live in a community where power [meaning
absolute control of the other] is the rule of thumb and it is enforced
brutally through honor killings, child beating, sexual abuse,
beheadings etc., fear and terror are pervasive. The need to hate and
the need to have an enemy are in place by age 3 and the Jew is among
the most hated of all. I will return to this in a moment. It is
precisely because of the terror that few factor in the ramifications
of shame-based child rearing practices because the implications are
enormous and the ability to do effective interventions are highly
compromised.
What winds up happening, in a nutshell, is that the mother who has
been so pervasively and insidiously traumatized struggles to give the
child what s/he needs. Its not that the mother doesnt want to and I
dont mean to minimize the role of the father either but it is here
that the problem of splitting the world irrationally into loving vs.
hating begins without being able to develop the cognitive piece to
bridge between the two extremes.
There are many adults who may appear to be high functioning but the
splitting is there below the surface in their minds and they still
struggle to be free from their terrors of abandonment and rejection,
feeling humiliated and shamed by this impotent inability. So that when
the terrorists and the Ummah scream in a deafening voice we have been
shamed and humiliated! it might be worth the while to ask how did they
themselves participate in creating a collective self which is so
easily shamed by others? If a person has a realistic sense of self, it
is hard to buy into being shamed as an adult. There is the Arabic
saying: He hits me and cries, and races me to complain.
Dr. Stern raises the subject of the Tamil Tigers. Yes, counter
terrorism studies have repeatedly defined them as a secular
nationalist ethno-separatist organization. However, the experts forget
that it is the first three years of life when the cultural-religio
ideologies are absorbed like a sponge ingrained into the personality.
In Hindu culture as in Arab Muslim culture, the child is not supposed
to separate from the mother. Prabhakaran, the charismatic leader of
the LTTE, claims that religion is a non-issue and ironically vowed
never to marry, yet did so in a Hindu ceremony. What is the importance
of this? It shows that the process of identify formation is much more
nuanced and complicated than we like to admit. It is a reminder that
there is no purity of identity. Indeed the LTTE on the one hand threw
out their Muslim Tamil-speaking members in the early 1990s and yet on
the other, there are reports that they are recruiting people of mixed
parentage Tamil-Muslim and Hindu-Catholic from the south (personal
communication, A. Gunawardena) When I was in Sri Lanka in March, I
wondered about this history and the growing local Arab Muslim
community.
This added dimension of religious identity is thrown into this mix.
For example, Muslims refer to Hindus as najus meaning filthy because
they are polytheists. This is its socially sanctioned prejudiced
attitude. Then there are the Jews and Christians as Dr. Stern points
out with the land of Israel being sacred to all three. But in the
minds eye of the Muslim, Judaism and Christianity and their believers
are subjugated to Islam as Dhimma. The root of the word means to blame
so that the Prophet Muhammad built into the religion an
institutionalized ideology where you can always blame the other and
never have to assume responsibility for your own communitys
predicament. This is to say nothing of the ideology of submission only
to Allah and never to a non-Muslim so that any occupation stings
deeply.
You know, Musa (Moses) is the most frequently mentioned prophet in the
Quran. Why? Because of the giving of the law at Sinai Moses makes
divine will manifest in human discourse in the Torah. However, to be a
believer requires a leap of faith. The Christians had to appropriate
the giving of the law and then added to it with the New Testament. The
Prophet Muhammad was faced with a much more difficult task since he
had to juggle two preceding religious identities. Muhammad initially
borrowed extensively from the Jews who at that time lived in what is
now Judenrein Saudi Arabia. He borrowed with the hopes that the Jews
would convert. When that didnt happen, he became enraged and more
deeply engaged in Jihad and Dawa [the call to convert]. However, this
still left him and his followers with the problem of their mixed
heritage, that is their Judaic and Christian roots.
The Ummah struggles to admit to this borrowing. It is very difficult
to do so when the Jew and Israel are always at the eye of the storm.
Muslims seek to cancel out their Judaic roots and the Islamic
terrorists seek to kill them off rather than accepting the fact that
Judaism and Islam are so similar up to a point. The unacknowledged
terror is the fear of losing their identity in the other. Think:
enmeshment. Jihad is unique to Islam Judaism and Christianity have
nothing remotely similar. People routinely fail to remember that the
Muslims invaded Spain fi sabil Allah [fighting] in the path of Allah
in 711 AD. They came on Jihad. The Crusades were a response to
massacre, forced conversions to Islam, Muslim invasion, conquest and
the animosity for the Prophet co-opting the New Testament by the
Quran. So the Islamic terrorists attempt to resolve their religious
identity confusion by brute force, using suicide bombers as a tactical
tool with this psychological undercurrent. By the way, the Sira (the
biography of Muhammad) records that the prophet attempted suicide
twice; though this has rarely been pointed out as a modeling moment
for Muslim identity. (personal communication, R. Paz)
Thus, it is not merely that the ideologies per se are exacerbating the
violence but it is the way in which they function and are deployed by
their practitioners. I agree with Dr. Dalrymple that poverty and
humiliation are not sufficient explanations rather that there is a
fear of recognizing that their identity is mixed not pure. They are
uncomfortable with the impurity of their own desires which are
accompanied by violent fantasies that get acted out in real time on
innocent victims. Just like BTK, the serial killer, their external
life is a mask of sanity but their internal life is a mess of
psychosexual violent fantasies.
But surely it cant be that hard to comprehend what kind of mind the
suicide bomber must have, given the fact that s/he is part and parcel
of the Umma, born and raised by the Umm. The vast majority of whom
venerate Ayman al-Zawahiri who ordered the execution by firing squad
of the 15 year old son of one of his closest confidants in the
presence of the father and other colleagues. (Montasser al-Zayyat, The
Road to Al-Qaeda, p.105) This mind is merely a reflection of the
crisis within Islam. [E. Sivan, Hitnagshut btokh ha-Islam [The Crash
Within Islam in Hebrew]. The crisis has been projected on to the West.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D.
in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He edited and wrote the
introduction to David Horowitzs new book [31]Left Illusions. He is
also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of the new book [32]The Hate
America Left and the author of [33]Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchevs
Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and [34]15 Tips on
How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews
and articles [35]Click Here. Email him at [36]jglazov at rogers.com.
References
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27. http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17602
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36. mailto:jglazov at rogers.com
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Through the Eyes of a Suicide Bomber: Continued by Jamie Glazov
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=19111&p=1
FP: Thank you Dr. Kobrin. One very powerful and clear dynamic here is
the guilt these extremists feel for their own sexual desires, which
have been demonized in their religion and culture, and now they seek
the cleanse themselves of this guilt through hating the object of
their lust (freedom in the West) and then ridding themselves of their
dirty flesh (suicide) in an attempt to redeem themselves.
Dr. Raddatz, could you kindly expand a bit and succinctly crystallize
for us the meaning of:
[1] having no sense of self.
[2] shame-based child rearing practices.
[3] splitting the world irrationally into loving vs. hating.
And kindly comment how and why this pathology leads to scapegoating
the Jew and hating him most of all.
Also, why and how does suicide bombing become a rational and
legitimate course of action within this pathological dynamic? And
kindly comment on Dr. Kobrins point that the Sira records that the
prophet attempted suicide twice. This is not a very well known fact.
Could you integrate these phenomena for us?
Raddatz: Quite an ambitious request as it goes right at the core of
the whole question.
The way we look at the problem of Islamic violence has a lot to do
with our kind of fancy differentiating. I am far away from criticizing
Ms. Stern, but when we stress that there are imams condemning suicide
bombings we simply tranquilize ourselves with time-consuming
platitudes.
Firstly, as FP has pointed out, those imams do not play any
mentionable role in Muslim politics. Secondly, they are part of what
is referred to as "taqiya", the Islamic duty to systematically lie to
non-Muslims, and thirdly the real heavyweights in the imam business,
like Muhammad Tantawi and Yusuf Quaradhawi, make no bones about
suicide terrorists belonging to the most valuable form of existence
Allah has ever had the grace to create. As Tantawi pointed out, inside
this privileged species there is even another inbuilt peak version: If
you kill as many Jewish women and children your paradise guarantee is
even more guaranteed, so to speak.
What we have here is the usual - admittedly gruesome -
ideology constructed by elites to manipulate people. By the same
time we arrive at the first point FP wants me to elaborate on - the
so-called self. Although many profit takers in the current science
scene want to discuss it away, it is still there. It is still a
generally accepted interpretation that the "self" is the somewhat
paradoxical faculty to observe oneself observing oneself. In other
words, the interaction between ego and self constitutes the
personality that is able to separate - at least hypothetically - from
its own role and judge it in a greater context. If it is, however,
only thinkable as part of a mass, the "ummah" or any other
politico-religious "movement", there will be little individual
distance from any controversial question.
Correspondingly, these "individuals" will be convinced more by
material than by theoretical arguments. Thus, they will be
rather "pre-destined" i.e. commanded by "holy books" and/or leaders
who decide for the people and represent a collective self. What we
have to keep in mind is this: Due to the still intact survival
instinct only a small Muslim minority wants to blow itself and others
up, but a large majority agrees to the Islamic justification of
destroying non-Islamic situations.
As a direct consequence we are faced with the "shame/honor" mechanism.
Typical for totalitarian systems altogether. As being "oneself" is an
aberration, it is a shame to insist on it and a corresponding honor to
renounce it and denounce others if they do not follow this rule.
"Ego-extinction" (Arabic: tadjarrud) is an official, high-ranking
mental exercise to get rid of individual temptations. Among the
"normal" Muslims you will find very few who allow themselves an
independent, outspoken opinion outside the official Islam mainstream.
Whoever has lived for a longer period of time in Islamic countries -
like myself - very probably has experienced that there is a lot of
distrust and tactical behaviour within the closest family relations.
He or she who violates the rules or just makes simply a wrong
decision, does bring shame over the family, over the tribe and -
ultimately - Islam. Here we have the very reason why inventions are
simply unknown, everyday things always delayed and almost only able to
be accelerated by corruption. In this context I think Ms. Kobrin's
concept of "umm" and "ummah" - mother and community - is very
worthwhile pursuing. It will probably explain why we will
eternalize our problems with Islam if we do not realize that the
groundwork is being laid during earliest childhood.
The forgoing absence of an intellectual distance to questions
concerning Islam calls for Manichaean behaviour and language as well
as readiness to exert violence. Therefore, the Western "dialogue" with
Muslims has shied away from compromises let alone contradiction so
far. Every major Muslim demand, especially the conservation
of pressurizing women and the death threat to dissidents and converts,
has been accepted and thereby added to the love/hate split thinking
also in the Western migration scenario. This is what I meant by "fancy
differentiating". It is our own political or rather "Islamic
correctness" that has developed very hard codes of thinking and
behaviour itself. Meanwhile we have a mandatory line of argumentation
in Europe that depicts Islam as a problem-free phenomenon which has to
be imported unchanged and kept as unintegrated as possible. The second
highest constitution judge in Germany spreads the semi-official rule
that Islam must not be forced to answer questions critical to the
"religion".
Thus, we should not be too astonished at the Western process - at
least in some major European countries like England, Germany and
France - of a distinct approach and assimilation to Islamic rules and
regulations. It is accompanied by long-term aspects which are clearly
meta-historical and out of direct political reach, namely a growing
hostility against women, combined with an
equally growing "understanding" for homosexual and paedophiliac
interests, as well as renewed anti-Semitism. The latter is not
restricted to Muslims but being emancipated again in Europe nowadays.
It is an old phenomenon as the repeated attempt to
"overcome" traditional society patterns, particularly connected to the
Jews as "inventors" of the first law as such in the development of
mankind.
We have heard that Moses is mentioned frequently in the Koran, and I
may add the well known fact that anti-Semitism goes historically along
with periods of distinct power concentrations. So it is probably the
decline of Western individuality, along with with the media info
explosion, curtailing the collective memory, which promotes radical
ideologies like Islam with all strings attached - growing sympathy for
organized crime, violence and women's repression, anti-hetero sexual
"theories" and other post-modern achievements. To blame the US is a
favourite game in Europe, but does not grasp the overall picture at
all.
As for Muhammads biography (sira), the scholars are not very certain
about the double suicide thing, as they are very shy about him
altogether. We are faced with another psychological question here
waiting for discussion and clarification. It has a lot to do with
Muhammeds wildly changing mental states and obviously deeply
rooted, rather psychotic situations, reported by his companions. As
the Koran waits for a historical analysis, Muhammad waits to be laid
on the couch. I call him the "burning glass" of Islam, meaning the
representation of a world moving power in the nutshell of a personal
but highly abstract lifetime. It is the combination of radical
exclusiveness with the "leader's will" that justifies any violence and
gives suicide bombers the illusion of individuality - a sense of life
by dying.
FP: Thank you Dr. Raddatz. While it is crucial that you bring up the
reality of "taqiya" and that we must not be naïve when confronting it,
I think at the same time we must stress that there are many Muslims
and Muslim clerics who are sincere in their belief in a peaceful Islam
and are honest in their denunciation of terror. I think it would be
fair to say that Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Director of the
Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community, is one of them.
In any case, Ms. Stern?
Stern: Well, I agree with both you and Dr. Raddatz -- there are Muslim
clerics who condemn suicide murder- as we have seen in the week
following the London attacks. And yet we should not assume naively
that the clerics who support suicide murder are unimportant in this
war.
We are all struggling with the question of why terrorists do what they
do, and how their situations differ from those who are not terrorists.
One problem we face is that we don't have enough interviews of
radicals who said no to terrorist recruiters -- so it's hard for us to
assess what qualities distinguishes those who say "yes" from those who
say "no."
The notion that poverty causes terrorism has been disproven again and
again, as the other participants have pointed out. But terrorists I
have interviewed tend to emphasize humiliation and confused identity
in their answer to the question -- why do you do what you do?
Sometimes it also seems to be a kind of vicarious humiliation - the
notion that my people are humiliated so therefore I must act to avenge
their pain.
Still, as our other contributors have made clear, most people feel
confused about their identities at some point in their lives, and most
people feel humiliated. I think of my university, Harvard, as a
humiliation factory - everyone feels humiliated, except, perhaps, the
president. And yet we don't see a lot of terrorists emerging from
Cambridge. Not yet, anyway. So if humiliation is important, it is
certainly not sufficient.
Could it be that the shame-based child-rearing practices and splitting
the world into good and evil are important additional ingredients, as
you suggest? I think that Dr. Raddatz is absolutely correct in
emphasizing Manichean world views. I have the feeling that honor and
shame are also critical here, but at this point it's just a feeling -
I haven't been able to do the interviews that would allow me to assess
your hypothesis.
I brought up the question of military occupation only because it is
described as the most important factor in a recent book, Robert Pape's
Dying to Win. But I see terrorism as much more complex than this - it
is not just a response to military occupation. Most military
occupations have not resulted in terrorism, and much of the terrorism
we worry about most today is not a response to military occupation.
FP: Dr. Dalrymple?
Dalrymple: I think the question of 'military occupation,' in light of
the London bombings, must be viewed as at best an ostensible
justification rather than a real reason for Islamic terrorism, at
least outside Israel and Palestine.
I was very interested to see that one of the people involved in the
bombings was not only a believer, but a devotee of Elvis Presley. Now
these things seem to me to be highly contradictory. I think it is
difficult to find any interpretation of Islam that is reconcilable
with an admiration for Elvis Presley, who is surely symbolic of all
the decadence of the west that Muslims (not entirely mistakenly, I
must confess) see. Elvis Presley represents the triumph of sexual
desire over all restraints; nothing could be further from the spirit
of Islam, at least in its sublunary phase. For these two things to
exist in the same human breast creates a terrible and guilty conflict.
(Another bomber loved cricket - the quintessentially English game.)
Let us not forget that it is possible to be a terrorist - to kill
people at random - without any wish or vocation to die oneself. It is
true that a terrorist who kills himself while killing others is even
more terrifying, since it is difficult to conceive of anything that
might deter him, but overall the terrorist who lives to kill another
day may be more effective in the pursuit of any definite end.
The point is:
i) that the Islamic terrorists, at least of the London bomber kind,
have no specific demands to make
ii) they are clearly trying to resolve some conflict within
themselves.
I think they are trying to prove to themselves that the west offers
them no temptations, that they are actually more Islamic than the
Prophet, though at the same time a still small voice tells them that
this is not so. Death is a solution, it squares a circle.
FP: Dr. Kobrin?
Kobrin: First I want to extend my heartfelt condolences to Dr.
Dalrymple on account of seven/seven. As someone who has been so
involved in trying to understand the mind of the Islamic terrorist, I
can only imagine how difficult these days have been.
Now, there is no question that the entire Islamic terrorist
organization and its members who are manufacturing suicide bombers
like Al Qaeda lack a balanced, nuanced sense of self. The tragedy is
that they and their Ummah have come up with a feeble justification of
military occupation to excuse their aberrant behavior. Then there are
the scholars of Academe who should know better and who should be more
insightful but aren't. They willingly take the bait hook, line and
sinker which only further compounds the matter, thereby putting more
innocent people at risk of being murdered. They vicariously murder and
are therefore, accomplices. This is not so passive aggressive
behavior.
All the ideologies of Islam especially tadjarrud and taqiyah which Dr.
Raddatz explains, must be explored from not just a psychological point
of view as to the meaning that they express but also how their
practice impacts children in light of early childhood development.
Here in lies the crux of the problem.
The neighbors, friends and family who say that they never dreamt that
so-and-so suicide bomber could do something like that or that he/she
was a radical Islamist terrorist, remind me of the shocked family
members and neighbors of serial killers. It is routinely understood in
the field of mental health that a person can appear normal but mask
violent fantasies and act them out in real time, murdering innocent
victims. This is not rocket science.
Dr. Raddatzs image of the Prophet Muhammad as the burning glass of
Islam resonates with the intense charisma that he continues to hold
for his followers. The sense of deprivation in the narratives of the
Quran (cf. J. Lachkar.1983 The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A
Psychoanalytic Perspective. Unpublished PhD thesis. Los Angeles:
International University.), Sunna, Ahadith and Sira is huge and very
attractive to many of the followers who carry within themselves their
own deprivation. Deprivation should not be confused with poverty.
Those hijackers of 9/11 and the suicide bombers who were well educated
and came from middle to upper middle class families had their own
sense of emotional deprivation, rejection and abandonment which went
undetected and which was accompanied by profound rage leading to
violence and cold blooded murder.
Dr. Dalrymple points to the severe conflict within and an inability to
reconcile and tolerate difference. He raises the important issue that
you can be a terrorist and murder without committing suicide. However,
the combination together is extremely terrifying because the dirty
little secret is they do not want to die alone. No one probably does .
. . but we dont go around taking out innocent people by murder in
order to square the circle. It should not be forgotten too, that the
Prophet Muhammad died with his head in the lap of his favorite wife
Aisha whose name happens to mean life. Furthermore, he was buried in
her room where she continued to live, earning her keep from the alms
she received from pilgrims who visited the site. Think: Womb to Tomb.
The image venerates a permanent fusion signaling that the ideal is
never to separate.
And by the way, whats with this favorite wife business? Polygamy is
nothing more than a clever way to pit one wife against the other and
never have to deal with male rage. Plus if you dont like what your
wife says, you can merely blow her off and go on to the next so that
you never have to learn how to resolve conflict. That would make
learning how to negotiate a peace quite difficult dont you think?
Thats why, if we are going to discuss the military occupation, it
needs to be understood in light of Islamic history and its ideologies
rather than taking it at face value. The ideology of submission, i.e.
Islam, would make it very difficult for male Muslims to tolerate any
other position than conqueror but certainly not that of the conquered.
FP: Dr. Raddatz? Feel to comment on what has been said in the previous
round, but let's also move on to the recent suicide bombers of 7/7 in
London. In terms of what we have learned, up till now, of who they
were, what do their pathologies and crimes bring to this discussion?
Raddatz: As Ms. Stern rightly pointed out, our subject gets more
complicated the more insight we gain, be it psychological, political,
social and what have you. Islam appears as a comprehensive spectrum
that contains and encourages all sorts of behaviour but clearly
favours deceit and violence as far as the achievement of goals is
concerned, especially in "competition" with non-Islam.
I also agree that "humiliation" is one of the key words in the affair
since the Western superiority in productivity and education is clearly
staggering. Aside from this: Whatever negative happens it is somebody
else's guilt anyhow. We have to consider again that the Islamic
self is usually understood as part of a greater mass or "movement".
Thus, the destruction of something un-Islamic may imply
also self-destruction in order to get noticed at all.
Insofar as Dr. Dalrymple's remark of the London terrorist being a
Presley fan confirms the compatibility of both in the mass aspect. In
other words, watching the behaviour of rock festival participants can
be quite revealing if you search for signs for mass movements in the
Western civilization. Moreover, it is amazing how parallel things seem
to develop as far as "humiliation" at Harvard and European
universities goes. It is a favourite term over here as well and
exemplifies a fast spreading educational elitarianism that in turn
fraternizes with the Islamic elites and purifies Islam from
any violence reproach: The Islam is not the problem" and "violence is
not the Islam".
There should be consent not only on the spectral character of the
Islamic culture but also the corresponding special kind of freedom it
creates. As the Koran and tradition offer a wide variety of measures
between peace and war, Muslim power has always preferred the violent
side and, therefore, has brought about a historically grown phenomenon
which I call "counter-ethics". This means to say that the special
Muslim freedom created a similarly special inclination to
violence wherever an opportunity arises to gain an advantage - inside
and outside of Islam.
We should note here some very important examples I have mentioned
partially in a previous round. They confirm the power of man and a
rather free interpretation of what is referred to as "religion" but
is merely naked and mostly quite primitive power politics. Firstly,
Jews and Christians have been historically extinguished although there
are Koranic regulations to the opposite. Secondly, women have been
historically humiliated, beaten, raped and killed although there are
Koranic rules and many traditions to the opposite. Thirdly, dissenters
and apostates are badly beaten and often killed although there are
clear rules saying that their punisment should be postponed into the
beyond.
So we should not be very astonished if we are repeatedly confronted
with "honor" murderers, suicide bombers and other Islamic geared
perpetrators as long as our "elites" tell us that "Islam is not the
problem". In my new book coming out next month ("Allahs Women - Djihad
between Sharia and Denocracy") I describe - among other subjects -
exactly this self-legitimizing violence which does not need a "self"
but simply asks for and lives on "individuals" serving
indoctrination purposes. In London, terrorists were at work who grew
up in the Western environment, obviously without assuming any
individualizing element of this civilization.
They confirm the complete failure of "integration" and, moreover, Dr.
Kobrin's impressive formula of "womb to tomb". The "divinely" granted
freedom to kill secures Allahs community and simultaneously the only
form of "individuality" possible in Islam. We know that "not all"
followers of Islam are violent but its spectral structure and growing
populations will provide for vast supply in the future.
However our politicians may twist the matter, as long as they are
unable and/or unprepared to face these Islamic realities they will not
only violate their responsibility towards the non-Muslim majority -
they will encourage further bombings and "honor" killings as well as
the risks of greater conflicts. In this context we should not forget
either the growing pressure coming from the Islamic investor side
which plays a fast rising role in the global portfolio management and
state financing game, thereby adding to corruption and
political paralyzation. The major players in Jeddah, Riadh and
elsewhere are often identical with those who finance Al-Qa'ida, PLO,
Hamas and so on.
FP: Ms. Stern, your comment on the Pakistani suicide bombers in
London? And, by the way, this conversation is getting me very
depressed. Is there any hope is combating this enemy? From this
discussion, it seems hopeless. Can you please offer some optimism how
we might prevail over this death-cult and threat to our freedom,
safety and overall way of life?
Stern: Well there are reasons to feel hopeful. First, the Muslim
community in London reacted very swiftly to condemn the attacks on the
public transportation system there, something we did not see enough
of after 9 11. Second, I think law enforcement and intelligence
officials have a better understanding of the "enemy" than they did
immediately after 9/11. There is growing recognition that obliterating
the threat is not possible, that penetration of terrorist
organizations is often a better approach than capturing or killing
operatives, and the level of cooperation among and between law
enforcement and intelligence agencies continues to expand.
It is also important to remember that terrorism tends to run in fads
-- Islamist terrorism will not be with us forever, although,
admittedly, it is likely to replaced by other "brands..". Alas, risk
is part of life -- and terrorism is unlikely to go away. All this
suggests that the most important thing we can do as individuals is to
make sure we are loving our family as friends as well as we can: every
day is precious.
FP: Dr. Dalrymple, do you have some words of optimism and hope?
Dalrymple: The London bombings may have caused at long last people to
examine their fatuous multiculturalist pieties, which I believe are
fundamentally derived from the restaurant model: today we eat
Hungarian, tomorrow Mexican, the day after Lebanese, and so forth.
Clearly, this is possible and very enjoyable, but there are more
important and deeper things in life than a variety of cuisines.
Perhaps people will begin to see that some values are simply not
compatible with others, and will now be prepared to stand up for those
that we believe in. Certainly I hope people will start to examine the
abominable abuse of women that, if not universal, is very widespread
in the Moslem population, and that is a large part - I believe - of
the attraction of Islam to increasingly and essentially secularised
men. (Interestingly, a recent article in Le Monde about French
converts to Islam gave the statistic that 83 per cent were men -and I
suspect that the 17 per cent of women were in response to love
affairs, though I don't know this to be the case. This is eloquent
testimony.)
In Britain, if we had the courage to defend Moslem women, I think
Islam would lose a lot of it residual attraction. Unfortunately, the
Prime Minister's wife went into court shortly before the last election
to defend a Moslem schoolgirl's right to wear 'traditional' costume -
not traditional in Luton, by the way - I suspect to obtain the Moslem
vote for her husband, and probably knowing, and certainly with the
duty to know, the often abominable social meaning of this costume.
Let us hope the recent events have taught the Prime Minister the folly
- no, the sheer wickedness - of this.
FP: Dr. Kobrin, last word goes to you.
Kobrin: It might be helpful to consider that when we find ourselves
feeling hopeless and helpless about terrorism that these feelings are
really not ours but rather those of the terrorists denied, split-off
and quite literally inflicted on us.
I agree with Dr. Stern that the counter terrorist experts, law
enforcement and the military are broadening and deepening their
thinking which will help facilitate more effective strategies. Its
interesting too that Dr. Stern characterizes terrorism as a fad.
Psychologically fads express imitative behavior. This links back to a
point which Dr. Raddatz made of singular importance the lack of a
self. The terrorist persona is as if it had one when it doesnt. I find
it ironic that identity theft is a frequently occurring crime which
sponsors terrorism because the term itself exposes not only the
terrorists problem of identity but more importantly that the terrorist
actually must steal from another in order to bolster this tragically
fragile sense of self. In the expression identity theft we have a good
example of the transparency of the terrorists and their concrete,
imitative behavior about which they themselves remain clueless.
Unfortunately, it comes with a significant price tag for us and I
agree with Dr. Raddatz we should be very concerned about the push to
expand investment and banking. Dr. Dalrymples restaurant model is
valuable in understanding the disastrous effect of such superficiality
nor could I agree more about why there are so many European
secularized male converts to Islam.
Coming on the heels of the initial London bombings, we now have Egypts
Sharm El-Sheikhs tragedy. Unfortunately, things will probably have to
hit rock bottom in a series of Muslim countries before the Ummah
really takes on the problem of Islamic suicide terrorism which is of
its own making.
For us, several things might be important to keep in mind as we learn
to counter terrorism in our daily life that perseverance and endurance
are needed over the long haul, being prudent rather than hyper
vigilant, remaining skeptical rather than cynical when possibly
encountering the Islamic demeanor of deception. We should also enjoy
life not because the terrorists are envious that we can and they cant
but because it is part and parcel of loving our family and friends and
caring about others. Countering terrorism entails knowing not only
ourselves well including our deepest fears but now more than ever we
must know the terrorists terrors their deepest and darkest -- in
order to be effective in containing the violence.
FP: Jessica Stern, Dr. Tilman Nagel, Dr. Nancy Kobrin and Dr.
Hans-Peter Raddatz, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium. Well
see you again soon.
Previous Symposiums:
[25]Iraq: A Report Card, Jeffrey White, Turi Munthe, Karl Zinsmeister,
Steven Vincent, Cliff May and Jacob Helibrunn.
[26]Russia's Darkness at Noon, Richard Pipes, Fredo Arias-King, Yuri
Yarim-Agaev, Dick Morris and Ramsey Flynn.
[27]Muslims in France: A Ticking Time Bomb? Mohamed Ibn Guadi, Soner
Cagaptay, Laurent Murawiec and Reza Bayegan.
[28]Murdering Women For Honor, Dr. Gudrun Eussner, Dr. Nancy Kobrin,
Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz and Seyran Ates.
______________________________________________________________________
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D.
in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He edited and wrote the
introduction to David Horowitzs new book [29]Left Illusions. He is
also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of the new book [30]The Hate
America Left and the author of [31]Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchevs
Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and [32]15 Tips on
How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews
and articles [33]Click Here. Email him at [34]jglazov at rogers.com.
References
25. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19031
26. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18782
27. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18631
28. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18370
29.
https://www.donationreport.com/init/controller/ProcessEntryCmd?key=D8Q0U3W0R8
30. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=6317
31. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6158
32.
https://www.donationreport.com/init/controller/ProcessEntryCmd?key=C1P3Y2N7P9
33. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=3
34. mailto:jglazov at rogers.com
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