Pushback
Nightline's Terry Moran Takes a Closer Look at the Stories of the Day
What makes a terrorist?
I've just returned from London, where I was covering what some people are calling "the doctors' plot"--the botched terror attacks last week on London's West End and Glasgow's airport. Investigators say the perpetrators were doctors, medical students and other health-care professionals, and among the many worrying concerns such a plot raises, there is a broader question sparked by the diabolical imaginative leap of turning doctors into bombs: What makes a terrorist?
It is a fact of our times that every once in a not-so-long while you will pick up your morning paper, or log on, or tune in to your morning show and discover some atrocity somewhere in the world--young people torn to shreds at a nightclub, a plane blown out of the sky, commuters incinerated in a subway--all done in the name of a viciously distorted understanding of Islam. Most people's first thought on hearing of such bloodthirsty mayhem will be, "Muslim terrorists again." And while that reaction will be wrong on occasion (remember Oklahoma City), and while you may find that it verges on bigotry, you simply cannot deny that most of the time it is an empirical fact of our age that the hunch will be spot-on correct. It will be "Muslim terrorists again."
Why? That's a critical strategic question in the struggle against a barbarism that threatens to define our lives. It's also a very complicated question, but let's focus on one thing that is almost certainly not driving Islamist terrorism and one thing that is.
It's not poverty. Poor people in Muslim societies are not more likely to become terrorists. They are not more vulnerable to the stew of theology, resentment, and fanaticism that forms the mentality of Islamist terror. In fact, the opposite is true--but you wouldn't know this from listening to many politicians and activists.
As David Wessel points out in The Wall Street Journal today(subscription required), President Bush and others are given to fatuous utterances like, "We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." So, if we write a big enough check to fight Third World poverty, we'll defeat terrorism? This is a self-regarding, morally vain and dangerous notion. In most of the world's fifty poorest countries, there is little or no terrorism. It is simply an insult to say that a poor young man in Haiti is a potential terrorist simply because he's poor. As people have demonstrated throughout human history, poverty is not a moral handicap.
Islamist terrorists and their supporters are shown by study after study to be better-off, better-educated, and have better opportunities than most others in their societies. Perhaps the most chilling findings come from the work of forensic psychiatrist and former CIA case officer Marc Sageman, who studied 400 Al Qaeda members and found that "the vast majority--90 percent--came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that's usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways." So Al Qaeda and other violent jihadist movements are not best understood in the Marxian discourse of class struggle. The question isn't money. It's identity.
To be a modern person is to be an insecure person. By that I mean insecure in one's identity in relation to others. Rootlessness, anonymity, transience--these are the conditions that make many of us who we are in the modern world. And that in turn makes the construction of our identities--our personalities--an active endeavor, a matter of choice and struggle and reflection. This is the condition of a free mind in a free world--liberated, but in a fundamental sense, alone as our forebears were not.
Because for most of human history, the question "Who am I in this society?" was simply unimaginable. Family, ancestors, clan, tribal networks, geography, faith and ties to the land made one's identity a given--a fact defined extrinsically by seemingly immutable social forces. There is great comfort in this; we are social creatures, and a deep, dense social network can provide a rich sense of identity. But it is a truth of our time that as the world moves rapidly from the country to the city (more than half the human population now lives in cities--a staggering social change in our species), fewer and fewer people will live amid the old certainties, and more and more will experience the dizzying possibilities of life as an individual set adrift in the human sea of the great city.
And they will be insecure in who they are. Not all, perhaps--the poor are insulated, to an extent, by the sheer magnitude of their physical struggle to survive, by their continued reliance on each other and on an older faith that focuses its promises on the next world, and by their isolation. But take a few steps up the social ladder in an immigrant community, or in the sprawling new cities in the Muslim world, and it's a different story. Doctors, engineers, architects and other professionals are in the vanguard of the movement into modernity. They are immersed in a world of transnational practices, standards, collegial networks and ethics that can be corrosive of their old allegiances. They can get lost, especially if they have migrated to the west, with all of our societies' temptations, blasphemies, materialism and skepticism.
So they go home. Not literally--no, they return to a country of the mind, an Islamist fantasyland of certainty, dignity and power. In that world, they know who they are. And they know who we are--infidels whose life of freedom and radical individuality and anonymity confused them for a time, threatened them with annihilation. They will not be annihilated. They have decided they will annihilate us.
The question of identity does not by a long shot explain what makes a terrorist. There's the issue of why British and European Muslims seem more vulnerable to the terrorist worldview than American Muslims do; I'll take that up in my next post. There's also the question of theology--is there something in Islam itself that has been activated by the pressures of modernity? Perhaps. But for now, I think it's important, as we try to understand things like the "doctors' plot," to refocus our attention from poverty and explore instead the psychological experience--the inner lives--of those who are so determined to kill us. That way lies victory.
July 5, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | User Comments (14)
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I remember Oklahoma, don't you? SEarch for "Terry Nichols" and you find associated with him this:
"Cebu City at the time was a reputed base for several militant organizations, including Liberation Army of the Philippines, the Communist Huk, and the Al-Qaida affiliate Abu Sayyaf. Stephen Jones, the trial attorney who first represented Tim McVeigh, cited evidence of a meeting in Davao City, in Mindanao in 1992 or 1993, when Yousef members, Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali Khan Amin Shah and a "farmer" met to discuss the Oklahoma bombing. Jones said the FBI was aware of the meeting."
And did you even look at that list of "50 poorest Countries"...
#1 Afghanistan
"...is little or no terrorism"--Yea, those other countries are just a slice of heaven.
-BfC
Posted by: BfC | Jul 6, 2007 12:33:15 PM
You do know what the "terrorists" think of news people? See the UK paper "Guardian"--Here is what one former UK bred terrorist (Hussan Butt) says:
"When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
...
He [London Mayor Ken Livingstone] then refused to acknowledge the role of Islamist ideology in terrorism and said that the Muslim Brotherhood and those who give a religious mandate to suicide bombings in Palestine were genuinely representative of Islam."
Islam is at war with us. Islam is at war with Islam. Islam is at war. I don't care what you, Mr. Moran, think the answer is:
"But for now, I think it's important, as we try to understand things like the "doctors' plot," to refocus our attention from poverty and explore instead the psychological experience--the inner lives--of those who are so determined to kill us. That way lies victory."
They want us non-believers (Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief)) converted or dead.
-BfC
Posted by: BfC | Jul 6, 2007 1:56:44 PM
Some more "...psychological experience--the inner lives.." to study. From Reuters (7 July, 2007):
"A religious edict by a prominent Saudi cleric suggesting liberals are not real Muslims has enflamed debate over reforms in the conservative Islamic state, with self-professed liberals fearing they will be attacked."
You, Mr. Moran, wrote:
"So they go home. Not literally--no, they return to a country of the mind, an Islamist fantasyland of certainty, dignity and power. In that world, they know who they are."
In the cradle of Islam, they fight each other still. It has nothing to do with the west, it has to do with Islam and its self appointed leaders and followers/practitioners.
And, you are wrong about poverty having nothing to do with this "problem". Again, quoting you:
"It's not poverty. Poor people in Muslim societies are not more likely to become terrorists."
Look at the madrases where the new crops of Islamic clerics come from. One major reason that poor families send their son's to these schools is because the familes are poor and the schools are "free" (in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi schools/mosques are funded by an agreement with the Saudi Government/family because the current Saudi Arabian government/family came to power as a result of a Wahhabi revolt).
So, the current "leaders" in Islam have a very Leftest/Socialist/Communist outlook on life as they originated from the poor and and are educated only in the Koran and its "strict interpretations", reinforced by generations of clerics from the same vein.
The fact that others (included the highly educated) are willing to follow religious zealots (or any charismatic leader) should be of no surprise to anyone.
At this point, roughly 25% of the Muslims follow the "conservative sect(s)" of Islam. And in Islam, "Radicals" are the "Liberals/Secularists" that don't believe in the Wahhabi's strict theological interpretations.
Ending with the Reuters article quote:
" Responding to an online request for a religious edict, or fatwa, Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan said last month: "Calling oneself a liberal Muslim is a contradiction in terms ... one should repent before God for such ideas in order to be a real Muslim."
The fatwa said that liberal in this context meant "freedom which is not subject to the bounds of sharia (Islamic law) and which rejects sharia laws, especially concerning women…""
So, it is a strange confluence of extreme poverty and extreme wealth (Oil Shiek sized wealth) that has helped expand Islam's influences around the world. If neither were present (extreme poverty or wealth)--Islam would not be were it is today.
-BfC
Posted by: BfC | Jul 8, 2007 1:29:47 PM
I've been thinking about that question for two days...what makes a terrorist? ...and my only conclusion is...ideology...
We've always had terrorists in our midst..the ones of today are just different ...but the principle remains the same...
One person decides he knows better than anyone else how the rest of us should live and then gathers a following of people and seeks thru whatever means possible to impose his views on the rest of the world. I'm sure someone better versed in history than I am could explain it in more concise terms..but I'll do my best.
Hitler was a terrorist..Hirohito was a terrorist...They formed a coalition and terrorized the whole world for a number of years..the Jewish people in particular were terrorized by them...What about Communism.?.Stalin was a terrorist there's no doubt about that! The ideology behind communism may have sounded good..but we all know the horrors that caused! We all suffered thru the Cold War..and were terrorized by the possiblity of nuclear war with Russia..Then there was Viet Nam..and what about Cambodia when all their intellectuals were killed as in The Killing Fields...Those people were doubly terrorized...Now we have Muslims trying their best to terrorize the rest of the world...because obviously what they can't win thru free participation they try to win by FEAR..thus terrorism..So here we are again...with yet another ideology..someone deciding we all have to live by Mohammands Law. And young men willingly blow themselves up in order to terrorize and take as many people with them as they can...a cowardly act because they run around with their faces and heads covered and hide their identity. They sneakily load cars with bombs and terrorize unsuspecting people in the area...brave men fight out in the open...not so this group!! They hope to win by fear what they can't win any other way!!!
And from the looks of things lately, they are trying to terrorize each other! Sunni against Shia...Revenge killings..It can only end in annihilation for them both...! Sad misguided souls for whom life is such that they can't wait to get out of it!
So we still have 'terrorism' in our midst and I suppose it has always been so.!
There you have it in my view..overly simplified I'm sure. People love power and money and someone always wants to RULE the world...and in doing so...countless people suffer and die. It's just a shame that so many well meaning young men can be so easily led astray by a charismatic figure spouting a high minded ideology!!! And terrorism is born!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: phyl | Jul 10, 2007 11:10:42 AM
Interesting way of looking at it, who am I in society?
Posted by: Lewis T. | Jul 13, 2007 4:01:43 AM
About 5:30 pm in July 9, 2007, a car exploded in a street of the Jinan city, Shandong province, China.
The driver, a 31 year old woman, was killed on the spot. Another taxi nearby was burned. The taxi driver was wounded.
This news is blocked by the local power.
The offical report in China by now is brief: The explosion was maybe caused by car crash.
As the explosion was so huge, this explanation seems weak.
Posted by: PowerSoSo | Jul 13, 2007 11:15:32 AM
You exactly right to say that writing a bigger check to fight poverty will not stop terrorism. The issue is theological at its root, not financial. The more our government's leaders and military pick up on this reality, the more successful they will be in addressing this issue of terrorism that continues to drive our culture, economy, and way of life today and into the future.
Posted by: Dillon Burroughs | Jul 16, 2007 1:21:44 PM
All human beings have free will, but we all look for reasons beyond the simple matter of choice.
Terrorists are murderers who have been given a free pass to murder, if they do it in the name of their cause. Period.
We don't give murderers a free pass in the U.S., no matter what the reason for the murder. I don't understand why we give others the free pass, and struggle to find some justification or rationalization, when Americans are murdered overseas.
There are only two ways to deal with another human being - reason or force. The terrorist has already told us his chosen method of dealing with others. He has rejected reason and chosen force, leaving us no choice but to deal with him similarly.
Posted by: rdt | Jul 17, 2007 8:37:29 AM
What makes a terrorist? You do. (The News Media and hypocritical liberal "pacifists.) Terrorists are opportunists. They prey on weakness, cowardice, and appeasement. You've created a world in which terrorists can flourish.
Posted by: John Kantor | Jul 18, 2007 11:49:28 PM
Hi, Terry...
Great work on this story. Your comments, combined with those of your respondents, are very interesting.
Additionally, we faithfully watch "Nightline" and enjoy the show's format.
Is your news blog only available, via the ABC News/"Nightline" website, where one must log in order to keep abreast of any new commentary?
Or, may one have access to it by another means?
Keep up the Great Work at ABC and "Nightline"!
Many thanks...
Gari D.
Posted by: Gari D. | Aug 1, 2007 4:17:30 AM
Mike Nifong and Crystal Gail Mangum are terrorists, Terry. The Duke lacrosse case was terrorism against the innocent, driven by an anti-white ideology.
Why don't you write about that?
Posted by: Veritas | Aug 12, 2007 12:38:24 PM
A large portion of American identity today is heavily influenced by the media, politics and entertainment industries. This is cyclical and as long as these venues continue to focus on the terror element they are in essence training future terrorists. I would much prefer a focus on anti-terrorists and people moving us forward rather than backwards. The same is true for global warming and many other of society’s problems if we focused on the possible solutions and not the problem we would be more likely to solve the problem. In other words to build a global team we have to find common goals. Right now it appears that most of the world does not have the same goals as the United States. Common ground is where real progress and inspiration can be found. We reward terrorists and harm ourselves with fear by paying so much attention to them.
Posted by: llm | Sep 7, 2007 1:59:28 PM
Some people, like Michael Vick, are just born cruel. They are terrorists. Some are just "lucky" enough to be in countries where they can blame it on a "cause".
Posted by: MJ | Feb 10, 2008 5:56:27 AM
Interesting post with many good points. Poverty in and of itself does not cause terrorism. However, there has been a consistent correlation by scholars of foreign policy who have studied this issue between the combined factors of resentment and anger against perceived "oppression," poverty and tyrannous governments, identity, and using religion to justify it all. Zbigniew Brzezinski writes about this in "The Choice," Roger Pape in "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," CBS News analyst and former CIA agent Michael Scheurer, and CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen have all repeated this.
If you read Eric Hoffer's classic work about mass movements you understand that in every "mass movement" there are promises of delivering its members from perceived oppression to happiness and victory. When this is combined with twisted radicalized distortions of religion it can be a disaster story.
The political philosopher and historian Eric Voegelin found the roots of fascism, Nazism, and communism all came from the attempt to "immanentize the eschaton" or create heaven or earth.
After being upset with U.S. support of autocracies in the Middle East, especially the Saudi royal family, the terrorists of the world try to remake the world in their image.
Posted by: Omar | Mar 13, 2008 7:24:20 PM
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