Is terrorism a reaction to poverty? The data is in: hell, no. Marc Sageman, who served with the CIA in Afghanistan, studied the biographies of 400 terrorists who targeted the USA. He's also the author of Understanding Terror Networks, published in April 2004. Sageman writes:
"...Most people think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing - the sociopath, the criminals, the religious fanatic, or, in this country, some believe they’re just plain evil. Taking these perceived root causes in turn, three quarters of my sample came from the upper or middle class. 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."
Peter Schramm of the Ashbrook Centre has more on this issue, as well as a link to the full study and its methodology.
This result may seem odd to some people, and we're also seeing growing prosperity in some countries correlating with stronger Islamist movements. Why might that be? StrategyPage offers an intriguing argument that says what we're seeing is a predictable reaction to collision of Islamic societies with a Western culture whose tenets of self-will and self-definition are too dangerous to certain sects of Islam. Hence those elites in Sageman's profile who undergo a crisis of faith following extended contact, turn to Islamist movements for resolution, then take their Qu'ranic and Qtubite/neo-Kharijite admonitions to a logical conclusion. It's just a theory, but one worth exploring. ('Cicero's' excellent May 19, 2005 article "Swarms" adds another dimension.)
Speaking of theories...
The January 2006 issue of Scientific American notes a couple of other theories that extend or otherwise elaborate on Sageman's work. A couple of quick excerpts:
"According to Florida State University psychologist Thomas Joiner, in his remarkably revealing scientific treatise Why People Die by Suicide (Harvard University Press, 2006): "People desire death when two fundamental needs are frustrated to the point of extinction; namely, the need to belong with or connect to others, and the need to feel effective with or to influence others."
I suspect this is a bit reductionist, but I'm including it because it may be directly helpful to our readers in their personal relationships. Later, the article discusses how Islamist networks influence recruits. Bottom line: anyone familiar with cult dynamics won't find much that's new. "death cult" looks more and more like a clinical description, rather than a pejorative. The article concludes with this:
"One method to attenuate murdercide, then, is to target dangerous groups that influence individuals, such as Al-Qaeda. Another method, says Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger, is to increase the civil liberties of the countries that breed terrorist groups. In an analysis of State Department data on terrorism, Krueger discovered that "countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which have spawned relatively many terrorists, are economically well off yet lacking in civil liberties. Poor countries with a tradition of protecting civil liberties are unlikely to spawn suicide terrorists. Evidently, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully without interference from the government goes a long way to providing an alternative to terrorism." Let freedom ring."
(originally published Nov. 30, 2004; updated January 23, 2006)
I'd like to suggest an alternative theory: The Ghost Dance. I'm basing this on a book of the same name written by Weston La Barre, with the subtitle "The Origin of Religion".
The conceit strikes me as particularly apt:
Sound familiar?
While there are certainly political radicals, who are Muslim, who use terror as a tool to try to achieve their goals, the UBLs of the world are literally operating on another plane: the war to end time.
This is a-rational and not at all amenable to rational persuasion or dissuasion. If one buys into that world view, there's no moral exit excepting death.
I think we need to keep the distinction between the two groups clear in our minds, at least if we intend to solve the problems they cause.
The central aspect is the moral standards established.
The moral standards of the West are pro-freedom, pro-life, while Islamic behavioral standards are opposed to freedom and life.
Uncomfortably to liberals, moral relativism is a real help to the death-worshippers, because moral relativism refuses to jutge evil as evil.
The Islamic disguise is an alleged morality, but a fake morality, as morality has the requirement of freedom (i.e., freedom of conscience), something that is incompatible with Islam, where the dogma of predestination pervades the ideology (belief-system, in Hugh Fitzgerald's terms).
But, self-labeled as liberals or not, we must remember that Islam literally means submission.
Razib over at Gene Expression had an interesting post on this last week. His most interesting point is that it makes sense that many transnational terrorists have backgrounds in the natural sciences because people who excel at those tend to have minds that are relentlessly logical (which also explains why most of them are the picture of rational sanity, something I've believed for a while), so when they start from bad premises (i.e. a Qutbist interperetation of Islam) they draw the logical conclusions from this -- that their worldview is incompatible with the "Western" one, and that therefore the west needs to be brought to its knees -- whereas less relentlessly logical people are more easily succeptible to the doublethink which holds them back from the logical conclusions of hardline religious beliefs (this is why we don't see every Catholic bombing abortion clinics).
Hi John! :)
I agree wholeheartedly with your theory. Ghost Dance reaction is a basic response from cultures newly exposed to capitalism, where individuals of the culture are not perceived to receive benefits from the capitalist paradigm. Cargo cults are another form of reaction, and can morph into Ghost Dance cults, as with pacific islanders who believed that the Japanese would return to sweep away the whites from all the islands.
I think all Salafists and Wahabbists are basically "millenialists", in that they seek a return to a "millenial" timeframe of fundamentalist Islam. I blogged on Ghost Dancers here, and we discussed the concept several times here at Winds, as I'm sure you recall. I think the model fits well.
Joe, Scott Atran has done some very good work on the Genesis of Suicide Terrorism, and corroborates the findings in the article you cite, here and here. I particularily liked this paper on "fictive kin" relationships, and how they contribute to the indoctrination process, because kin selection is one of the primary principles in my belief structure.
And, Matt is so right! Razib's post is a must read for this thread.
I have some problems with the comparison that has been drawn between early 20th century Pawnee culture and/or South Pacific Cargo cults and contemporary Arab-Islamic culture. For one thing, the Arab world is huge, while those societies were tiny; Arabs have coexisted (not all that well, but still) with the West for generations, while these groups were previously quite isolated; those earlier groups were inward-looking, while Islamofascism projects its anger outward.
If you really want a historical model, you should look closer to the societies in which AQ is thriving. The Assassins in the Mideast and the Thugs of South Asia spring quickly to mind. Both were conspiratorial, mixed secular goals (lucre, political power) with otherworldly aspirations, elevated murder to a ritualistic status, and were dangerous out of all proportions to their actual size.
Which brings me to the real question: is anyone at the CIA reading Sleeman? I sure hope so.
Jinnderella, I also agree with Matt.
But I think you construe "Ghost Dancing" too narrowly in seeing it as a response to purely economic issues. Economic pressures lead to wars and migration; they don't lead directly to eschatological thinking. The US is populated largely by people whose ancestors got out of debased economies (there were other causes of course). They didn't all become millennialists.
I think it more the systemic collapse of society, it structures and institutions. Warrior chiefs, for instance, of demonstrated bravery, cunning, tactical and strategic leadership, were utterly ineffective when confronted by a new--and not copyable--technology.
Traditional medicine offered no cure for new diseases; and vast numbers were wiped out, leaving medicine men/shamans powerless.
Values in which the culture had invested heavily--symbolic warfare, for example--were devalued by the outsider, with no visible recompense.
We are seeing the same events occuring in traditional Islamic societies. The once-shunned western outsider is proving difficult to accommodate with historic responses. Various countries have tried to emulate the west in certain regards--western military training, from the time of the Ottomans onward; accepting/adapting political forms like parliaments and constitutions. But they are not proving successful at meeting contemporary historical challenges on the economic, social, or political levels.
While many simply lament their plight, and some actively seek internal reform, a few have despaired and turned both backwards and inwards. These are the Ghost Dancers of extremist, fundamentalist Islam.
Let me note again, though, that La Barre uses the Ghost Dance to analyze not just the Plains Indians, or Islam, but the origin of all religions. His sections on the ancient Greeks is as interesting as those on Christians and Jews. While he does not get into it, he's also a useful tool in looking at fundamentalist Hinduism.
A quibble for Matt from a practicing Roman Catholic: The reason you don't see us blowing up abortion clinics has nothing to do with inconsistency or double-think. It would, in fact, seem to me much more inconsistent--a much clearer example of double think, to kill and call ourselves pro-life. Where's the double think in not wanting to compound one moral horror with another? Am I misreading you, or do you have some problem with Catholicism?
John, yesyesyes! I did not mean to restrict the discussion to economics, but that capitalism is the "proximate cue" that catalyses a response. I think SES also plays a part in the ability of the 911 hijackers (for example) to acquire a "hard sciences" background, which razib says they maybe were predisposed to. Razib has done some awesome work on the sociobiology of belief lately-- I wish he would bundle that work into some sort of meta-post so we can reference it easily. :)
Kelli, it is certainly possible (and even probable) that a small subset of fundamantalist/reactionaries can exert disproportionate control-effect over the general population. Cites-- (my beloved) Pascal Boyer-- Religion Explained and Scott Atran-- In Gods We Trust and Dan Sperber-- Explaining Culture all emphasize this.
Joe, look at the amazon entries for these books-- razib gets a tithe back for any books sold thru his website. At the rate we all read here, I think it would be a good idea for Winds! Robin certainly should do that with her most excellent reading lists! :)
For example, I'd like to buy La Barre's book on John's recommend, and you could have a click thru that would return a pour boire to Winds on the purchase. Jus' sayin'........
This is one scary site. It demonstrates clearly that notions of western moral, spiritual and religious superiority that have been the cause of most of the inhumane and barbaric wars of the past two millenium are alive and well. Its amazing to see modern human beings debate how the destruction wrought by US foriegn policy is somehow the fault of its victims because they are outmoded and archaic in their practices. I guess its proof that no matter how far we think we've come we are still arrogant, brutish and inhumane. The basis for this discussion has a name, "The White Mans Burden", but I suppose in this case you've widened it to include all those inferior races who have whole heartedly embraced western "pro-life" philosophy, so maybe its more appropriate to call it the "Western Mans Burden". Anyway you slice it its evil.
How can Western culture be pro life??? Was the Holocaust pro life? Was WWI pro life? Was the butchering of Native Americans pro life?? If western culture is anything it is PRO GREED/
Oh dear - Greg seems to have exploded.
Dear Greg,
Sorry we're obstructing the object of your hate with studies and analysis. Maybe if you shut your eyes and yell real loud, you won't have to deal with any incovenient realities that might interfere with your personal neo-Marxist jihad aimed at Western civilization.
Oh, wait, you've done that already...
Sorry Greg, my only position is pro-science. sigh Sometimes I think I will have "There is a biological basis for all behavior" tattooed on my forehead.
I've never understood the biological basis behind tattooing, myself. Shrug.
Those with an interest in the 'origins' topic and related, who happen to have a day to kill in the DC area on Thursday (12/2) might want to check out this conference, at which Sageman - among others - will be a panelist. (Via Chap)
Fred - I don't have anything against Catholicism per se, though I'll be frank and say that I'm not much for religion in general. But that doesn't really matter since this isn't specifically about religion -- the phenomenon I'm picking at is one that religious and secular people are about equally prone to. I kinda tossed that off that example in a hurry on my way to class, so let me explain a little more.
What I mean is that if one operates from the premise that abortion is morally equivalent to murder of an adult, it follows that doctors who perform it are serial murderers. From there (unless we add some additional moral premise like pacifism) it presumably follows that these murderers should be either jailed or killed (otherwise why do we have the penal system and death penalty?).
It's just an example of course, but from it you can see how easy it is to arrive at some radical conclusions through internally consistent reasoning. Most people look at that reasoning and have an instant mental reflex that says "wait, no, something's wrong here." Which is fine. We have emotional reactions for a reason, and they can often act as a useful handbrake on reasoning your way off a cliff.
Or Razib and I could be totally off and that could have little or nothing to do with it. But it's an interesting discussion in itself, I think.
Oh, c'mon Paul-- there are strong traditions for tattooing and ritual scarring all over the cultural identity map! :)
Tribal identity, right? If you couldn't recognize someone from a different tribe morphologically, they could be identified by distinct markings. Look at biker tatoos and youth culture piercings. Modern recognizable markers.
Great post. Islamic terrorism comes from the Qur'an and hadith. It is reinforced and nurtured societally. It is also often its own reward, and is therefore worthwhile to many of its perpetrators even when political ends are not achieved.
#17 jinnderella
They are also instrumental in rights of passage and marital rituals in some cultures, as well as being status indicators. Some folks just don't have the Nike, Gucci, or Polo option! heh
Matt, I agree that that is the reasoning of some people. I also have to admit I part company from the Church on the death penalty. I think there's a distinction to be made between taking an innocent life and taking the life of a scumbag who commits a heinous crime. Having said that, though, I would make two points: 1) Even now, not all murders carry the death penalty. Sending abortionists to jail for a long time would suffice as far as I'm concerned. 2) Even if I thought abortionists deserved the death penalty, there's a big difference between any old person summarily executing someone (which is what bombing an abortion clinic amounts to) and someone given the death penalty after being given due process. I also recognize that we live in a society with the rule of law. As the law now stands, abortionists get neither jail time nor the death penalty. I personally despair of that ever changing, but it's something to work toward. In the meantime, I live by the law like everyone else. My point, and I do have one, is that a religious position need not lead to radical conclusions. Rational conclusions can be just as consistent with religious positions as irrational ones. That's why I question the assertion that Islam is the problem. The Turks, Indians, and Indonesians have their nutcases as do we all, but the preponderance of Islamist terrorists are Arabs, Persians or Southwest Asians (the Stanis). My guess is that it is those cultures rather than the Muslim religion that at the root of the problem.
>>What I mean is that if one operates from the premise that abortion is morally equivalent to murder of an adult, it follows that doctors who perform it are serial murderers. From there (unless we add some additional moral premise like pacifism) it presumably follows that these murderers should be either jailed or killed (otherwise why do we have the penal system and death penalty?).
This is why I consider most pro-lifers to be spineless hypocrites. People who really believed that abortion was murder would get off their ass and start shooting abortion doctors. Consider: If there was a euthanasia clinic down the block where parents were having their five year olds put to death, residents would take immediate violent action regardless of the law.
One of my favorite writers is the pseudonyomous Spengler whose articles appear in the Asia Times:
John's Ghost Dance analysis parallels his analysis of Palestinian suicide bombers:
Live and let die By Spengler
http://www.atimes.com/front/DD13Aa04.html
Spokesmen for the Palestinian Authority claim that Israel drove the suicide bombers to undertake acts of desperation. It is quite unfair to blame the Israelis, whatever one thinks of them. Blaming Islam is a cheap way to deflect the dissonance; supposedly the bombers die for a heavenly reward. Yet many other religions offered a heavenly reward long before the birth of Mohammed without encouraging suicide warriors. . .
On the contrary, political suicide is commonplace, indeed endemic, among populations who fail to adapt to changing circumstances. The popularity of suicide bombing among young Palestinians has much in common with other instances of large-scale suicide in recent years.
For example, this report in the London Telegraph of November 19, 2000: "The largest tribe of Amazonian Indians, the 27,000-strong Guarani, are being devastated by a wave of suicides among their children, triggered by their coming into contact with the modern world. . .
On the surface, to be sure, Arab society bears little resemblance to the pathetic remnants of aboriginal culture in the Amazon . . . Yet there is an important similarity, so glaring as to become obvious the moment we take notice of it. How quaint, we tell ourselves, that stone-age peoples still dwell in the Amazon, and we wonder: What are they doing in the modern world? Yet no one asks what 3.5 million Palestinian Arabs are doing on a small patch of land on the west bank of the Jordan, not to mention the 400,000 or so in camps in Lebanon and yet more in Jordan. They are an agrarian rather than an urban people, ill at ease with the economic pursuits of the modern world.
Mechanization of agriculture, rather than Zionist political aims, began displacing the rural Arab population in the 1930s, as a number of historians observe. This led to the 1936-39 Arab uprising against the British Mandate and Jewish settlement. Rather than disperse gradually like other agrarian populations, the Palestinian Arabs found themselves in refugee camps after 1947. Thanks to the relief efforts of the United Nations they obtained access to medical care and education, lacking in their old villages. The 700,000 Arabs who fled or were driven from Israel quintupled their numbers in two generations. For half a century they have nursed the dream of returning to a world which vanished long ago.
Suicide bombing cannot destroy the Israeli military, nor can it undermine Israel's body politic. It is an act of existential despair. Many of the Palestinian suicide bombers do not fit the profile of Islamic fundamentalists. Yet as surely as teenaged Guarani see the end of their culture, these worldly young people from the Islamic world see the end of theirs. What some Western observers call "Islamism" (to distinguish it from traditional Islam) is an effort to use the instruments of the modern world to recreate a traditional past that rapidly is slipping away.
We stand at the threshold, I wrote in this space some time ago of a great extinction of cultures, comparable to the Macedonian march through the Eastern empires under Alexander, grinding up the older cultures and leaving Hellenism in its place. This will be repeated in English rather than Greek. No matter that the Americans are reluctant rather than exuberant conquerors. The states of the region will decide whether to embrace the American cause and become satraps in the new empire, or to put up a resistance that will be futile, however fierce it might be.
Depending on these decisions the conflict might be nearly bloodless or costly beyond all imagining. Some not inconsiderable number of people will take the opportunity to commit suicide by hurling themselves against Israel, or against weaponry of the American empire, and their world will remain at war until there are not enough volunteers left.
Why go on living, after all? Humans are sentient beings who foresee their own demise. Like individuals, observed the German theologian Franz Rosenzweig, peoples know that they will die out as well. "The love of the peoples for their own ethnicity," he wrote, "is sweet and pregnant with the presentiment of death."
In my August 31, 2001, column (http://www.atimes.com/media/CH31Ce01.html) I observed, "Culture is the stuff out of which we weave the illusion of immortality ... Frequently, ethnic groups will die rather than abandon their 'way of life'. Native Americans often chose to fight against European settlers to the point of their own extinction rather than accept assimilation, because assimilation implied abandoning both their past and their future. Historic tragedy occurs on the grand scale when economic or strategic circumstances undercut the material conditions of life of a people, which nonetheless cannot accept assimilation into another culture. That is when entire peoples fight to the death."
The Palestinian Arabs fight to the death while the Guarani of the Amazon politely hang themselves. . .
Sounds like a good description of yer Al Qaeda types.
I have no idea why MT3 is suddenly showing full URLs in our sidebar, even when they're correctly made live. Never used to do that.
For the next little while, let's all just make private mental notes to put any URLs AFTER the first sentence. Should reduce the disruption on the main page.
Great - one more technical glitch to ponder...
whats your point - that we should ignore economic development cause lots of terrs are college trained engineers?
Thats silly. Terrs arent trained imams either, that doesnt mean religion isnt a factor.
Just as religion is a factor in a different way, so economics is a factor in a different way.
1. Less developed countries are more likely to become failed states. (though more developed countries, like Lebanon, are not immune) Failed states provide a place where its more difficult to stop terrorists from planning, training, financing, etc. Or where radical jihadits regimes can take over more easily (as in Afghanistan)
2. Similarly less developed states are more likely to have areas over which they do not exercise full control - Pakistans tribal areas.
3. The overall failure of economic development in the Islamic world is a source of humiliation for muslims living in the west. The Bernard Lewis thesis.
Robert Schwartz: “We stand at the threshold, I wrote in this space some time ago of a great extinction of cultures, comparable to the Macedonian march through the Eastern empires under Alexander, grinding up the older cultures and leaving Hellenism in its place. This will be repeated in English rather than Greek. No matter that the Americans are reluctant rather than exuberant conquerors. The states of the region will decide whether to embrace the American cause and become satraps in the new empire, or to put up a resistance that will be futile, however fierce it might be.”
US culture is also being replaced. This is a global phenomenon associated with accelerating change that bears only passing resemblance to the historic examples of one culture conquering another.
There is no “American empire”. There is only globalization, the complete interconnection of the world by communication, commerce, and culture. The birth process is painful and perhaps fatal. The society that is born will inherit elements from all the world’s people and won’t be much like present day America. (The contribution of 1.3 billion Chinese and another billion Indians will significantly dilute the US influence.)
and if youre less concerned about the bases for AQ and more concerned about the struggle for the Islamic world overall, i would point out that Islamist parties like the egyptian muslim brotherhood, etc do generally get more support from the urban poor. The current loon in Iran has a similar base of support. While for the most part the university educated elites in those countries, who are economically successful ARE more secular, and are either more prowestern, or there hostility to the west is of a more rational variety (of course if you think any antiwestern feeling in the third world is always irrational, you will have a differnt take)
Does radical Islamism go up with SOME level of development? Of course - cause the phenom we're talking about is one of the urban slums, not backward villages. The Pashtuns and other backward rurals who are fundie are something of an exception - in much of the muslim world the backward villages are both to unsalafi in their practices, as well as too passive politically, for this sort of thing. Note historical parallels to western Marxism.
Do SOME university educated types become terrorists? Yes, when their degrees are not matched by their successes - again see parallels with Marxism. And when living in the west, they find even economic success not matched by personal respect.
The earliest leaders of Zionism, like Herzl and Nordau, G-d bless them, were NOT impoverished Russian Jews suffereing from discrimination. They were educated, successful men, who got the good things of their societies, but who wrestled with issues of respect. I suggest reading Carl Schorske on Herzl.
All of which isnt about folks who commit suicide. Im more interested in the overall creation of radical Islamism - once its widespread, im not sure that how you get a handful of individuals to commit suicide is all that interesting a question.
hmmm...an interesting exercise in cultural understanding would be to draw parallels between Wovoka's desire for a steam locomotive full of winchesters and Iran's desire for full scale nuclear technology. ;)
Very a propos of this topic is this link.
While the study mentioned above my Joe discusses the terrorist-level findings, this study discusses the nation level findings. Unsurprisingly, the results are similar in that poverty is not, in fact, a factor in propensity for terrorism. The most surprising and interesting finding was that political freedom is linked to terrorism - states with low or high political freedom originate little terrorism while states with intermediate freedom have higher terrorism.
The only other factor tied to terrorism was geography.
Ugh.
Counter terrorism experts have recognized for years that those who perpetuate terrorism derive power from the gap between their fringe and extremist groups and those they oppose.
Those that include religion in discussions about power focused groups show a fundamental lack of understanding for who the enemy is, his purpose and what means he utilizes to that achieving that purpose.
Terrorists by definition hijack and ideology in order to further their political ambitions. When you try to point at Islam - something 1.x billion people practice peacefuly and decently everyday - you're assigning undue importance to what is generally perceived as an extremist/fringe member of their group - if at all.
I'll even go one step further - understanding this enemy as somehow different from the various other terror groups that have spawned from a variety of perverted understandings of all faiths is detrimental to the war effort.
Connectivity is key to winning this war, winning hearts and minds is key, integrating unassimilated populations is key (take notes Chirac), and if you look at a thoroughly ingrained belief system as suspect... it's not good for our efforts to win the war on terror.