What Makes a Suicide Terrorist Tick?

• Mohamed Atta (d. 09/11/01). Pilot of the plane that hit the north tower.

Bibliography

1) Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God

2) William James, “The Divided Self and the Process of its Unification.”

3) R.D. Laing, The Divided Self

4) The Bible

5) The Koran

6) Islam: Empire of Faith

A War of Ideas?• “On that day there shall be a blast on the trumpet,

and all that are in the heavens, and all that are on the earth shall be terror-stricken, save him whom God pleaseth to deliver; and all shall come to Him in humble guise.” -- Sura 27, The Koran

• “…if you spurn my judgments, and do not obey all my commandments, but break my covenant, then be sure that this is what I will do: I will bring down upon you sudden terror…” -- Lev: 26: 15

Some Hypotheses

1. The Schizoid condition

2. Self Loathing

3. The Sleep of Reason

4. “Altruism”

5. Indoctrination

1. The Schizoid Condition:

• A dissociation of one’s self from the world and from one’s self.

• “…the deliberate cultivation of a state of death-in-life as a defense against the pain of life.”

• The schizoid creates a “false-self system” which he presents to the world while withdrawing into a hidden “disembodied self.”

• Schizoids are “…people who experience them-selves as automata, as robots, as bits of machinery, or even as animals.”

The Divided Self

• “…the individual delegates all transactions between himself and others to a system within his being which is not ‘him’…the world is experienced as unreal, and all that belongs to this system is felt to be false, futile, and meaningless.”

--- R.D. Laing

Schizoid Psychosis: “Crossing Over”

• “If there is anything a schizoid individual is likely to believe in, it is his own destructiveness. He [cannot] fill his own emptiness without reducing what is there to nothing.”

• The psychotic schizoid is “a welter of conflicting emotions, from a desperate longing and yearning for what others have and he lacks, to frantic envy and hatred of all that is theirs and not his…”

Jihad “Struggle”

• “Greater jihad” is the struggle with one’s self to be a better more righteous Muslim.

• “Lesser Jihad” is the military struggle against infidels who subjugate Muslims.

• “Both the jihads have their own importance. In one, one struggles to amend his inner self, and in another he defends his religion.”

-- Mullah Mohamed Omar

The “Greater Jihad” or Inner Struggle

• Atta, struggled to be a pious Muslim, but was unable to live up to Islam’s strict moral requirements. His westernized libido was found of alcohol, tobacco, and lap dancing.

• His Muslimized super-ego struggled to repress these forbidden desires. He was tortured by guilt, shame and self-loathing.

2. Religion & Self Loathing

• Atta saw himself as a contemptible infidel, hated his “western identity,” and wanted to destroy it.

• “They will not cease to war against you until they turn you from your religion, if they be able. But whoever of you shall turn from his religion and die an infidel, their works shall be fruitless in this world; and in the next, they shall be consigned to the fire, therein to abide for aye.” The Koran, Sura 2

Projection, Destruction & Redemption

• Atta projected the part of himself that he believed had been corrupted by Western values onto the Towers. He saw them as temples to greed and infidelity, modern day incarnations of Sodom and Gomorrah.

• By destroying the corrupt part of himself, his “western identity,” he hoped to buy redemption for himself from Allah.

3. The Sleep of Reason.

• The suicide terrorist has difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction.

• Aristotle noted that human beings are rational. We gather and process information, formulate generalizations, tease out conclusions, get rid of inconsistencies, and manage over time to correct our mistakes.

• He failed to point out that the ability to reason can be anesthetized, especially by religion.

Reason and Religion pull us in opposite directions.

• Judaic, Christian, and Islamic myth looks back to our sacred origins, & “forward” to the restoration of a lost Golden age, life as it was before “The Fall.” So, these religions are CONSERVATIVE.

• Reason is practical and PROGRESSIVE. Science is constantly discovering new truths. We know more than our parents, and our children will know more than we do. So reason looks forward..

Religious myth disguised as scientific theory is dangerous.

• Creationism, for example, is myth marching about in the respectable garments of science.

• The narratives of religion are not supposed to be empirically demonstrable.

• Religion myth tells a story that makes the lives of some “meaningful,” but it should never be used as a basis for scientific research or pragmatic policy.

Myth cannot survive rational analysis.

“As for those that have faith and do good works, We shall admit them to gardens watered by running streams, where wedded to chaste virgins, they shall abide forever.”

--The Koran, 4:54

Closing the Gates of ijtihad“Independent Reasoning”

• Sunni Muslims believe that there is no need for “independent reasoning” about Islamic Law: the Shariah.

• Shariah is thought to be a fixed blueprint for society. So ijtihad is neither necessary nor desirable. Instead of critical reflection, Muslims are taught to imitate taqlid (“the past”). [See especially Anderson]

Shariah

• Orthodox Muslims hold that Shariah is divinely dictated, and so, an unquestionable basis for all conduct.

• Shariah consists of the proclamations of the Koran, sound Hadith (orally transmitted sayings and actions of the profit), and other sources.

4. Religious Altruism

• Atta hated his Western identity, and hoped to redeem himself by destroying it.

• But he also believed he was sacrificing himself for a greater good, the Lesser Jihad, the Islamization of the world.

• “These, the faithful and the infidels, are the two disputants who dispute concerning their Lord: but for those who have disbelieved, garments of fire shall be cut out, and boiling water shall be poured down upon their heads.” --Koran, 21:20

5. Religious Training

• As children we believe what our elders teach us: what to fear, who to hate, and so on.

• As we mature intellectually, we discover that what we have been taught is not always true.

• To prevent us from seeing the world as it is, and from drawing our own conclusions about it, some religions try to control us through misinformation.

Jihad Factories

• In Pakistan over a million students study in some 10,000 madrasas, schools teaching militant Islam.

• Pakistan’s religious parties, i.e. the Mujahedin, support such schools, and draw from them recruits to wage jihad for various causes.

• One such school, Haqqania madrasa, has produced more Taliban leaders than any other.

• Most of these leaders believe that nuclear weapons should be part of the arsenal of jihad.

Haqqania Madrasa

• A madrasa is a muslim religious seminary.• Haqqania Madrasa: NW Pakistan.• 2,800 students: ages 8 to 35. • The youngest boys sit cross-legged 4 to 8 hours

per day memorizing the Koran.• Older boys learn the Hadith, Islamic history and

jurisprudence.• There are no world history, math, or science

courses taught.

Jeffrey Goldberg’s visit

• In March 2000 Goldberg enrolled as a student in Haqqania Madrasa.

• He stayed for a month, talked to whom he pleased, participated in classes, and studied the Koran.

• In one class, he was challenged to explain why Americans hate Osama bin Laden.

Goldberg’s Dialogue

• Goldberg argued that bin Laden purposely targets innocent people for his own ends, and his practices contradict the teachings of “The Koran.”

• The class shouted him down and began chanting “Osama! Osama!”

Too much religion addles the brain

One student, abusing all logic, argued, “The atomic bomb comes from Allah, so it should be used.”

Goldberg writes, “I then asked, ‘Who wants to see Osama bin Laden armed with nuclear weapons?’ Every hand in the room shot up. The students laughed and some applauded.”

Review: The hypotheses again

1. The Schizoid condition

2. Self Loathing

3. The Sleep of Reason

4. Altruism

5. Indoctrination

The Schizoid Condition.

• Atta, and his ilk, were schizoid personalities with psychotic tendencies. The jihad they prosecuted was not only against the West, it was against their own Westernized, infideic, alter egos.

• Unable to cope with normal human interaction, incapable of giving and receiving love, and tortured by guilt and shame, the hated self withdraws into a part of itself that wants to die.

• Laing asserts, and I agree, that one’s “sense of identity requires the existence of another by whom one is known.”

Another factor

• The SLEEP OF REASON:

1. The critical faculties of the suicide terrorist have been anesthetized by religious myth, ideology, and indoctrination.

2. The terrorist cannot distinguish fact from fantasy.

Two Motives

• Self Interest: By destroying the corrupt part of themselves suicide terrorists hope to redeem themselves in the estimation of their God.

• Altruism: By sacrificing themselves, the September 11th terrorists believed that they would be ridding the world of infidels, and that that was surely a good thing.