Anat Berko
Special to IPT News
For 20 years I studied and interviewed Islamist mujahedeen
(jihad fighters) imprisoned in Israeli jails, examining their inner
worlds and discovering the obsessive thoughts leading them to carry out
terrorist attacks. They were addicted to fantasizing about an
alternative reality, describing their compulsions in metaphors similar
to those used by obsessive gamblers and drug addicts. They likened them
to "worms" (duda in Arabic) burrowing into their brains and
driving them to seek not another game of cards or a fix, but dead
Israelis, Americans, Europeans, or anyone else they considered infidels.
They did not try to resist their compulsions or consider that their
actions might be wrong, because they felt completely controlled and
manipulated by the concept of jihad, which dictated their behavior in every sphere of life.
The findings of my research indicated that the jihadists' obsessions
created what are known as "overvalued ideas," that is, false or
exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic. One often
repeated, was the vision of what awaited the shaheed (a martyr
for the sake of Allah) in the Islamic paradise after death. The
sensations of the release of tension and relaxation come only after the
terrorist act, when the perpetrator looks at the people he murdered.
Even suicide bombers whose explosive belts failed to detonate or who
were arrested before they could carry out their missions described a
transcendent sensation, a smile as they approached their targets.
They spoke of their inability to control their impulsive behavior, harmful to themselves and others.
They described the mujahed's [the jihad fighter's] search for
meaning in his life, how he turns his back on civilization and
everything it represents. Many of them felt rejected by their immediate
surroundings, either because of feelings of inferiority, marginality or
guilt for things they had done (or not done) that brought dishonor to
their families, or simply because they could not integrate into society
as productive, contributing citizens. Those who had been exposed to
Western society had strong feelings of inferiority, jealousy and
rejection, especially because of differences in life styles, sex roles,
confidence and other personal attributes. Some of them noted
unbridgeable gaps between culture and science. One dispatcher of suicide
bombers spoke of the great differences in capabilities, culture and
economic condition between Christian and Muslim Arabs. For the
mujahedeen, people are either good or bad, and that conceptual polarity
directs their course.
Terrorists are also frustrated and alienated by those who rejected them, leading them to announce that as mujahedeen
they "reject the rejecters." A similar sensation has been noted in
criminological studies as a criminal behavioral dynamic, and because the
criminal is rejected by a normative society and cannot integrate into
it, he declares war on it. Generally speaking, there is no
psychopathology among Muslim terrorists. That is, none of them can be
diagnosed as having a recognizable mental illness, even those who
attempted to carry out suicide bombing attacks. What remains to be
examined is whether or not there is a collective pathology, and if it is
a question of a society, many of whose members find it difficult to
suppress violence and control their urges and anger.
Jihad, a holy war against the infidel, is the personal duty of every
Muslim, and if he does not wage it, he will die as a religious
hypocrite, someone who only outwardly practices Islam but does not truly
believe, and be damned for all eternity. The terrorists I interviewed
told me that waging jihad is, for the mujahed, the way to partake
of Allah's mercy for themselves and the members of their families, and
to go directly to paradise without the Islamic "tortures of the grave"
and without undergoing a painful examination by angels before they are
allowed to enter.
Exhilaration and ecstasy accompany jihad fighters in their search for
arenas of excitement around the globe. They look for places where they
can rape and kill with impunity and fight the infidel in the name of
Allah, reaching the pinnacle of masculinity and honor reserved for the shaheed.
Superficially, they may seem to be fighting for an ideal, but in
reality, even in suicide bombing attacks, there is an element of desire
for reward, both in this world and the next. The overwhelming desire of
many Muslim adolescent boys, even those educated in the West or who are
converts to Islam, especially those living in countries where there is
no real governance, is excitement. To that end they stream into
confrontation zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Libya, Iraq,
Africa (such as the recent terrorist attack in Kenya), and Syria to
experience the mission, the excitement and promise of being a shaheed as
the ultimate in self-realization.
Frustration, alienation and a sense of inferiority accompany the
increase in the pace of modern life, and the gap between East and West
continually grows. The deprivation, restrictions and solutions imposed
by Islamism lead people to seek a group to which they can belong and
which will help them channel their negative feelings for the other, the
different, the "infidel," feelings which are common to all. In addition,
the need for adventure and excitement has helped create a kind of
"jihad tourism" especially but not exclusively relevant for young Muslim
men, including those born in the West. Today in Syria there are
jihadist fighters from 60 countries, among them converts to Islam, who
star in videos and help the jihadists recruit supporters and spread
propaganda. Jihad tourism is a subculture of fun and excitement, a
festival of violence, similar to the Western criminal and gang
subcultures. The jihadist lifestyle allows them to shake off the
confines of the disintegrating patriarchal family. As opposed to
ordinary criminals, whose social status is lowered when they are
classified as felons, the Islamic terrorists feel they are performing
good deeds for the sake of Allah, raising their status. They act on
violent impulses, are unrestrained in their aggression and try to
impress those around them by taking risks, hoping for admiration and
praise. They butcher people of all ages, use both sarin gas and
hatchets, behead, rape and mutilate their "enemies" with no regard for
the fact that until recently the enemy was a neighbor, or at least
shared their language and culture.
In their "extreme jihad journeys" they become accustomed to violence
and atrocities, or as one of the men I interviewed said, "we find the
smell of blood natural; even as young children we saw sheep being
slaughtered in our yards." In addition, they receive religious
justification from various fatwas, religious edicts issued
by sheikhs such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood's
religious authority. The jihad tourists live like wandering adventurers,
generally finding it difficult to integrate into the mainstream of
modern life. Instead they choose a path of murder and violence while
embracing simplicity and even primitiveness. Having different
aspirations, they do not have to compete with the West, seeking instead
to destroy it while hoping to recreate the past in preference to joining
the future. Before he was killed by the Americans, the terrorists I
interviewed often praised Osama bin Laden and the simple life he lived
in the caves of Tora Bora – an illusion, because bin Laden lived a life
of relative comfort in Pakistan.
The waves of jihad tourism and terrorism targeting mainly Christians
and Jews in the West have spun out of control and are not susceptible to
the restraints of family, culture, religion or society. Violent jihad
tourists are now overwhelming entire countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. The atrocities currently
being committed in Syria would not embarrass any legendary serial
killer, and there are thousands of such jihad tourists there, Sunni and
Shi'ite, and even Western converts to Islam, who torture and kill
innocent civilians.
It is the high season for jihad tourism, and while the mujahedeen
continue their activities in Iraq, the trendy watering hole is currently
Syria, where Bashar al-Assad's friends and foes alike indiscriminately
slaughter innocents of all ages and sexes. They surf on waves of blood,
and the operatives of the Al-Nusra Front, a group affiliated with
Al-Qaeda, slaughter both members of the Assad regime and of secular
rebel organizations who fighting the same regime.
The goal of Western educational systems is to provide the tools
necessary for functioning in society. In the Islamic countries, however,
children are taught from infancy that the family and clan are the
foundations of their lives and dictate their behavior. Islamic society
binds its members in chains, and the individual has no choice but to
submit to group pressure. Drowning in blood and violence, his only
justification is seeking the death of a shaheed.
And recent conflicts show that the West provides plenty of jihad
tourists despite our education and opportunities. For some, especially
converts to Islam, waging jihad in foreign lands can be exciting and
revolutionary and a chance to prove the depth of their new devotion.
With all of this in mind, I would like to propose calling murder for
the sake of Allah "shahadamania," which might make it easier for the
West to understand and fight the syndrome. It refers to the obsession
for istishhad [martyrdom for the sake of Allah] and includes
feelings of transcendence and euphoria after killing the infidel, the
capitulation to instinct, the inability to function in daily life, and
jihad as a good and even altruistic deed in this world to qualify for a
hedonistic afterlife.
Dr. Anat Berko, PhD, is a Lt Col (Res) in the Israel Defense
Forces, conducts research for the National Security Council and is a
research fellow at the International Policy Institute for
Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. A
criminologist, she was a visiting professor at George Washington
University and has written two books about suicide bombers, "The Path to Paradise," and the recently released "The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers" (Rowman & Littlefield)
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